
Class _HY-5_ao. 
Book. M* 
Copyright^ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE BURDEN OF THE CITY 



Home Mission Study Course 
[Inter-denotntnattonal'] 



Under Our Flag 

A study of conditions from the viewpoint 
of the Women's Home Missionary Work 

By ALICE M. GUERNSEY 
Cloth, 50 cents, net; paper, 30 cents net 



The subjects treated are : — 

THE SOUTHERN NEGRO 

THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINEER 

ALASKA 

HAWAII 

THE AMERICAN INDIANS 

SPANISH SPEAKING AMERICANS 

THE MORMONS 



A comprehensive yet concise setting forth of conditions and 
needs in our own land which demand home missionary effort. 
— Christian Advocate, 

Well worthtreading by those who believe that the homes of 
America need to be uplifted and safeguarded. — Epworth Herald. 

Splendidly adapted to lead home mission study. — Missionary 
Review of the World. 

Thoroughly well written and most valuable. — Baptist Teacher. 
One does not need to belong to a study class to find it both 
interesting and helpful. — Living Church. (Episcopal.) 
A mine of information. — N. Y. Observer. (Presbyterian.) 

It is a pleasure to commend so well arranged and suggestive a 
book . — Congregationalist. 



Fleming H. Revell Company, Publishers 



Home Mission Study Course 

[Inter- denominational] 



The Burden of the City 



By 
ISABELLE HORTON 

Superintendent of Social and Educational Work in 
Halsted Street Institutional Church, Chicago 



" There doth not live 
Any so poor but he may give ; 
Any so rich but must receive." 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1904, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 






L 



LIBRARY Of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 14 1904 

Copyngnt entry 

CUSS «*• XXc. Noi 

COPY 8. 

n» ■-am.Biiir ■ 1, 1 ,— 




New York: 1,58 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 63 Washington Street 
Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 30 St. Mary Street 



Home Missions is only another name for Christian 
sagacity and patriotism. We must rediscover the founda- 
tions of this Republic through missionary work, and 
strengthen our belief in the future of our commonwealth. 

To save the children is to fortress society, and to man 
the redoubt with resistless power. The rest of my life 
will be devoted to work in the midst of the problems of 
the city. The time is too short and the opportunity too 
splendid to deal with the problems of American life in 
any other way. 

— F. W. Gunsaulus. 



CONTENTS 

I. The Burden of the City . . 15 

II. Settlement Work ..... 49 

III. The Modern Church and its Methods . 83 

IV. The Deaconess in City Missions . .119 

V. Children's Work . . . . .149 

VI. Co-operation 195 



From the Editorial Committee 

A YEAR'S use of the initial volume of the 
inter-denominational Home Mission Study 
Course has demonstrated beyond a doubt 
that there is a demand for such a course, and, 
conversely, that the study intensifies the demand. 
It is a great pleasure, therefore, to be able to offer 
to the rapidly increasing number of women ac- 
tively interested in home missions a text-book 
from the pen of one fitted by practical experience 
not only to describe "the burden of the city" 
but to suggest numberless ways in which that 
burden may be lightened, and to give definite 
help in directing the efforts of workers towards 
that much-desired end. 

The full meaning of this book will not be dis- 
covered merely by reading it. Miss Weise's 
experience, so graphically told in its closing 
chapter, is more than a story. Home missionary 
women will not gather from these pages all 
which they contain for them if they fail to carry 
into realization — not the plans themselves, per- 
haps, but that better thing which grows out of 
plans presented by some one else, their adapta- 
tion to the personal environment. It is earnestly 
hoped that the minds of the readers of this book 
will have the characteristics of both a furnace and 

9 



io From the Editorial Committee 

a mould— a furnace receiving for re-combination 
the multiform plans and hints and helps that the 
writer presents — a mould in which are shaped, 
from these, new modes of thought and speech 
and action. 

In this connection we desire especially to em- 
phasize the purpose of the book as a means of 
inspiring in all women interested in home mis- 
sion work a just conception of the value of the 
deaconess as a strong force in meeting the diffi- 
culties that beset us in conducting and carrying 
forward aggressive Christian work among the 
needy and desolate of our large cities. The serv- 
ices of these quiet-garbed women reach into 
very heart contact with those who most need 
counsel, encouragement and help, both material 
and spiritual, and their work cannot be too 
strongly recommended to the organized Woman's 
Home Missionary societies of the church. 



FOREWORD 

IT is worthy of note that the most character- 
istic word used in any discussion of present 
day conditions is problem. We have our 
"social problems," our "tramp problems," our 
"labor problems," our "problems of the poor," 
and a score of others. 

This signifies a most encouraging frame of 
mind on the part of society at large. It means 
that the public is beginning to "take notice" — 
to consider — to look into the reasons of things. 
The only really hopeless state of mind is that in 
which one believes he has nothing to learn. 
Through the ages there have been questions re- 
lating to human life to which time and strength 
have been working out answers, and for which 
they must continue yet longer to work before a 
full solution of some can be reached. Religious, 
political and other problems have taken different 
forms in the different centuries. In the nine- 
teenth and twentieth have been added social and 
industrial problems which are the development 
not only of the more complicated conditions of a 
rapidly progressing civilization, but also of the 
advancing thought of that civilization which, 
leading to a quickened conscience, observes these 
conditions and seeks relief for that which is evil. 

ii 



1 2 Foreword 

Yes, we have our problems. Great cities are 
growing greater by leaps and bounds, and they 
harbor that which must give occasion for grave 
concern. Souls do not come into the kingdom 
at the ringing of the church bell. Poverty does 
not decrease by almsgiving. And from the black 
haunts of suffering and woe there come mutinous 
voices as threatening as the rumblings from the 
heart of a thundercloud. They threaten the 
safety of the rich; they set at defiance the au- 
thority of the church; they bode danger to our 
very civilization and our national existence. 

It is not within the province of this volume to 
settle these problems. The reader will close it, 
perhaps, with a sense of unrest deeper than that 
with which he began. But if, with the unrest, 
there comes also a deeper sense of responsibility, 
the book will not have failed of its mission. Its 
problems may be problems still, but when the 
conscience of society is aroused regarding any 
wrong there is hope for its betterment. 

Time is not lost in considering problems, as 
such. A wise professor once said in his class- 
room, "If I had a problem in mathematics to 
solve, and my life depended upon my solving it 
within five minutes, I should spend the first three 
in reading it." There has been much ecclesias- 
tical and philanthropic tinkering with conditions 
of whose real meaning and cause the tinkerers 
were as ignorant as babes. Not until we under- 
stand something of the inter-relations of poverty, 
sin, ignorance and false social standards, can we 



Foreword 1 3 

begin to grapple with them successfully. And 
even past and present failures may help to such 
an understanding. 

There is no attempt in these pages even to 
discuss those wider social problems whose solu- 
tion demands concerted or legislative action. 
These must be left to the social reformers who 
are struggling with them, wisely or other-wisely. 
They are of vital importance, and all good people 
must feel an interest in their righteous solution; 
but each projected reform has its champions 
among the giants of thought and literature, and 
each has its following. These pages are dedi- 
cated nather to the good women who, with 
hearts anchored to home and its duties, still look 
out pityingly into the big, sorrowful world be- 
yond and long to reach out helping hands to their 
brothers and sisters. 

Leaving the deeper questions then for the mas- 
ters of thought, we are to consider some of the 
conditions that make city missions necessary, 
and a few of the experiments that are being 
worked out with greater or less success for the 
improvement of that part of society variously 
known as the ''submerged tenth," the "masses," 
the "great unwashed " or the "other half." 



THE BURDEN OF THE CITY 



THE CALL OF THE CITY 

The fields stretch far to the rim of the day, 

And afar to the rising sun, 
The valleys between bear lilies white 

As the snood of a cloistered nun ; 
The winds of heaven, untrammeled and sweet, 

Fan meadow and fen and fall — 
But ever and ever the wind fares forth 

With its burden, the city's call. 

The maid who dreams by the side of the brook 

That flows from the niche in the hill, 
Heeds not that the bird on the blossoming spray 

Sits mute to hear her trill 
The tender lilt of an old love song, 

For she catches the throng's acclaim 
In the voice of the brook and the whispering breeze - 

They bring her the message of fame. 

The youth with his hand on the stubborn plow, 

As furrow on furrow he turns, 
Bares his head to the tempter breeze 

And a wondrous fire there burns 
In the depths of his steadfast, grave young eyes 

As he stands there strong and tall — 
For over the hush of the fallow field 

Comes stealing the city's call. 

Faint and far, like a thing of dreams, 

With palace and mart and spire, 
With the tread of a million hurrying feet, 

With hope and regret and desire — 
The city lies and it calls with a voice 

That touches men's souls with fire. 

— Boston Transcript, 



THE BURDEN OF THE CITY 

MANY and wise are the explanations 
given as to how cities came to be. 
That primitive man sought protection 
from both four-footed and two-footed foes is 
quite probable; also that very early the ties of a 
common kindred bound men together in groups 
or clan§. But when all is said we cannot get 
much farther than that there has existed and does 
exist a special instinct which prompts men to 
draw together— to seek the association of their 
fellows. It may be an association of love or of 
selfishness. One may seek the town for social 
companionship; another may plunge into the 
marts of trade for the excitement of competition 
and the love of supremacy. It may be merely 
the instinctive love of life, with which we are 
endowed by the Creator, prompting to seek the 
11 abundant life" of the great metropolis. Its 
shops, its factories, its schools, its massive build- 
ings, its prancing steeds and rushing trains, the 
"endless flood of humanity pouring ceaselessly 
up and down/' the "vague, indefinable delight 
at being one of a great multitude" — all this full- 
ness of life seems like a magnet to draw the in- 
dividual irresistibly into itself. 

17 



18 The Burden of the City 

Loomis, in " Modern Cities," says: "All 
effort to arrest the progress of cities and to check 
the tide of population that continually flows into 
them must be fruitless. The great social move- 
ments of the age cannot be stopped." From 
Cain, who first "builded a city" — sinister omen 
— to the last farmer who has rented his fertile 
acres and retired to the nearest village, it is the 
same. There is a centripetal force in the human 
cosmos. 

But this very inevitableness carries with it hope 
and courage. If this tendency be a universal law, 
it is of God, and therefore good. No matter 
what Babel of discordant voices accompanies the 
transition period, in the end— the far away end — 
discord must give place to harmony, love must 
conquer selfishness, and the city builded by Cain 
must give place to the city " whose builder and 
maker is God." 

« BACK TO THE SOIL " 

It is necessary to see and accept this truth in 
order to study present conditions sympathetic- 
ally, and to work courageously. The farmers 
wife finds it impossible to secure suitable " help " 
in her kitchen. Yet she knows that in the city 
are thousands of girls earning a mere pittance in 
shops and factories. The farmer himself reads 
of the seething life of the great city, its popula- 
tion crowded tier on tier in sunless tenements, 
and then he looks over his sun-bathed, wind- 
swept acres and says, " Why do they stay there ? 



The Burden of the City 19 

Let them come out into God's country where 
there is room and work for all." And straight- 
way he hardens his heart against the touch of 
pity. And yet the farmer himself as he becomes 
prosperous will rent the farm and move with his 
family into the nearest village, where he can 
daily look into the faces of his fellows and cross 
swords of argument with them in post-office or 
store. With better judgment and greater 
strength of purpose he is still obeying the same 
impulse as did the poor Irishwoman of the slums 
whom a charitable society tried to transplant into 
the country. Work and friends were found for 
the woman in her new environment, but within 
two weeks she was back again in her old haunts, 
ragged, dirty and wretched as ever. 

" Could you not find work enough ?" she was 
asked. 

"Yis, work a-plenty." 

" Didn't you have enough to eat and to wear ? " 

' 'Oh, yis, plenty to ate." 

" Then what made you come back ? " was the 
rather impatient query. 

" Paples is more coompany than sthumps," 
she answered with dignity, and the answer con- 
tains volumes of philosophy for the charity 
worker. Probably there are few persons who 
have actively interested themselves in the prob- 
lems of the poor who have not at least once tried 
this same experiment of transplanting the city 
product "back to the soil," with like discourag- 
ing result. 



20 The Burden of the City 

It is as useless to try to overcome this centraliz- 
ing impulse, or to rail at it, as to attempt to teach 
water to flow up hill. Yet water can, under cer- 
tain conditions, be made to flow up hill, and it is 
well that every effort should be made to bring 
the city dweller in contact with nature. What- 
ever great and far-reaching good is being worked 
out by Him who counts not days nor seasons, it 
surely is not His will that even to-day women 
toil in foul, dark rooms, and children have but 
rat-infested passageways and filthy alleys for 
their playgrounds. Not bodies alone, but souls, 
are fettered here, and it is of God that we try to 
break every yoke — yokes of ignorance and weak- 
ness and soul-blindness as well as of sin; yet 
when failures come, as they often will, the wise 
laborer will not be utterly cast down, recogniz- 
ing that we are in the sweep of a great world 
movement controlled by a power that works for 
good. Then, too, one can exercise the necessary 
patience and sympathy with perverted human 
nature only as he begins to understand that it is 
not wholly responsible for its environment and 
the resultant consequences upon character. 

COUNTRY vs. CITY 

The sweep of population to the cities, and the 
counter sweep of the better class of urban popu- 
lation from the centre to the suburbs has occu- 
pied the attention of sociologists for the past 
twenty-five years, and yet it is a daily marvel to 
the student of present day conditions. The 



The Burden of the City 21 

church is fairly bewildered by it and the mission- 
ary finds that it makes his efforts, at times, seem 
almost fruitless. The majority of city churches 
have failed, thus far, in adapting themselves to 
the changing conditions, and have practically 
beat a retreat before the oncoming hordes of the 
down-town districts. 

From whence do they come — the tumultuous 
horde of human beings that crowd into the man- 
ufacturing and commercial districts — those for 
whom the cheap tenement is built, and who fill 
to overflowing the deserted and decaying palaces 
of the rich ? How do they live ? What are their 
hopes arid fears ? What necessary part do they 
play in the great drama of life ? What becomes 
of them at last ? 

There is no question as to where the best come 
from. "The city," says Emerson, "is recruited 
from the country. The city would have died 
out, rotted and exploded, long ago, but that it 
was reinforced from the fields. It is only coun- 
try which came to town day before yesterday 
that is city and court to-day." Sociologists tell 
us, "Only the agricultural class possesses per- 
manent vitality. From its overflow the city pop- 
ulation is formed, displaced, renewed." 

This inflow from the country furnishes the city 
with its best fibre, physically and morally. The 
country boy entering the city is found after a few 
months in some store or office or bank, or with 
some railroad company. The girls enter the 
ranks of stenographers or become office helpers, 



22 The Burden of the City 

milliners, music teachers, etc. A small propor- 
tion of these climb the ladder and are heard from 
in the business or social world in later years. 
Many — most — manage to support themselves re- 
spectably, while the weakest, those who for 
some inscrutable reason are always "unfortu- 
nate," sink down through the ranks of unskilled 
and poorly paid labor into pauperism. These 
young people fresh from the country, with the 
"strength of the hills" in their frames and the 
courage of youth in their hearts, are usually 
found in the "boarding-house district" and 
within reach of the prosperous churches. Blessed 
are those churches who consider the needs of this 
class at that critical point in their careers before 
the country bloom has vanished and they have 
become absorbed by the reckless materialism of 
the city. Thousands upon thousands of the best 
young people in the land are lost to the Church 
and to Christianity year by year because the 
country church sends them to the city without 
proper safeguards, and the city church does not 
bestir itself to win and to hold them. 

CITIES WITHIN CITIES 

Descending in the social scale to the ranks of 
"unskilled" or day labor, we find a rapidly in- 
creasing ratio of foreigners. In every great 
metropolis there are sections — cities within the 
city — wholly given over to a foreign population. 
New York, Chicago, San Francisco, has each its 
"Chinatown," its "Ghetto," its "Little Italy," 



The Burden of the City 23 

its ''Bohemia." Passing through these sections 
one is confronted with signs upon shops, stores, 
churches and schools, in an unknown tongue and 
sometimes even in unknown characters. He 
hears a chatter of voices not one word of which 
he can understand. Dark-skinned women with 
shawls over their heads, or Chinamen with queues, 
regard him curiously, until he begins to wonder 
whether he be not himself the foreigner. 

One hundred years ago we were a people of 
4,000,000 souls and were substantially of one 
blood. Fifty years later, when our population 
had increased to 32,000,000, we were still prac- 
tically an English-American people. Up to 1840 
our total immigration from all quarters had not 
exceeded half a million. 

But during the next thirty years we received in 
round numbers 6,000,000 foreigners. Dr. Clark, 
in " Leavening the Nation," says: "Driven, on 
the one hand, by famines and oppressions at 
home; drawn, on the other, by the demands of 
labor in a new and rapidly developing country, 
by liberal homestead laws and cheap transporta- 
tion, they came and continued coming — every 
comer making himself an agent to bring others 
— often sending home money for the passage — 
until for continuous years at Boston, New York, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore and New Orleans, immi- 
grants were arriving at a rate of from five hun- 
dred to a thousand a day. They were mostly 
Catholics from Ireland, and the burden thus sud- 
denly thrown upon the American Catholic Church 



24 The Burden of the City 

was greater than it could well carry. Upon the 
immigrants the sudden lifting of old world re- 
straints was so relaxing in its effects that thou- 
sands of good Catholics were at this time lost to 
the church, which was not ready then, as it be- 
came at a later period, to . . . shepherd them. " 

It should be remarked in passing that the 
Catholic Church, despite its own dissatisfaction 
with itself, can give points to most Protestant 
churches in the matter of "shepherding "itsown as 
well as gathering in those outside the fold. With 
its magnificent organization, its hundreds of in- 
stitutions for the care of the children, the aged 
and the sick, and a devoted sisterhood consecrat- 
ing life and fortune to the cause, it holds the fort 
in the down-town districts and has good grounds 
for asserting its claim to be called the "working 
man's church/' 

Next in volume to this first flood of immigra- 
tion from Ireland was the German invasion, 
which, so far as it possessed any faith at all, was 
chiefly Lutheran, largely intermingled with infi- 
delity and irreligion. 

With the virile progressiveness of the Saxon 
and Celtic races, these Irish and German inva- 
sions, with a large Swedish contingent, pushed 
on, seeking openings and opportunities in the 
great West, largely along agricultural lines. 

Since 1885, the tides of immigration have set 
in from southern Europe and have become most 
serious and threatening. In March, 1904, over 
10,000 immigrants were landed at Ellis Island, 



The Burden of the City 25 

New York, in a single day. The next day 15,000 
more arrived on seven steamers. During the en- 
tire month, 31,000 were received in New York 
alone, and in the month of May, 70,417. 

These immigrants are mostly Poles, Russians, 
Italians, Austrians and Hungarians. They bring 
with them poverty, illiteracy and low ideals. In- 
stead of projecting themselves through the coun- 
try, mingling with other peoples and acquiring 
our language and civilization, they tend to huddle 
together by nationalities in the great cities, often- 
est near the seaboard. 

The best students of social conditions assert 
that undfcr present tendencies the close of this 
quarter-century will see the bulk of our popula- 
tion in our great cities. This means that the 
cities will be the controlling power in the nation. 
How essential, then, that the dominant power 
within them should "make for righteousness! " 

SOUTHERN CITIES 

In the South the sudden and overwhelming 
growth of the modern city was not so marked as 
to attract serious attention until it was disclosed 
by the census of 1900. Since that time the South 
has shared with the North in the great migratory 
sweep of population West and South, converg- 
ing in the cities. There is, however, this differ- 
ence, advantageous to the southern cities, that 
the migration into the southern seaboard states 
consists largely of native-born Americans who 
have been, in a sense, crowded out of the East 



26 The Burden of the City 

and North by the flood of foreigners. The most 
important effect of this fact from the missionary 
standpoint is that there is less of the Roman 
Catholic element to contend with than in the 
North. A leading minister of the South says in 
a public address on "The Problems of the Home 
Field," "There is one decidedly hopeful feature 
in connection with this problem as it affects the 
South. By the census of 1900 nearly fifty per 
cent, of the voters of the South were members 
of the Protestant Church, while in the northern 
states there was only twenty-two per cent. In 
the state of South Carolina seventy per cent, of 
the voters were members of the Protestant 
Church, whereas in the State of Maine there was 
a drop to eighteen per cent. With the stronger 
allegiance to the Church in our section of the 
country, and by taking time by the forelock, con- 
ditions are far more favorable towards a per- 
manent entrenchment of Protestant Christianity 
in our manufacturing centres and in all our 
densely populated districts than is true of any 
portion of the North or West." 

Often there are set in motion waves of influ- 
ence which affect indirectly the movements of 
population. The resuming of operations upon 
the Panama Canal is such an event, in that it will 
doubtless bring new tides of immigration into 
the South, especially into the Gulf cities, and put 
them face to face with conditions possibly even 
more serious than those which threaten the sea- 
board cities of New England. Miss Helm of 



The Burden of the City 27 

Our Homes (organ of the Woman's Home Mis- 
sion Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
South) says in a stirring editorial: 

It is probable that Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, Pen- 
sacola, Tampa, and possibly other towns, will become great 
commercial marts through which the traffic between the east- 
ern and western worlds will pass, and hence become converging 
foci of the streams of immigration flowing into this country. 
Homes, lodging-houses, schools, churches, provisions of every 
kind, will be in such demand in the next two decades as to 
endanger the sanitary and moral condition of these cities. The 
overcrowded tenement houses of London and New York will 
be duplicated, and with the same fearful results, unless state 
and municipal laws are enacted that will grapple with the 
danger in* time. 

Then, with this rush and swirl of population and trade that 
will be called " growth " and "prosperity," all the problems of 
godlessness will be intensified beyond anything we have yet 
seen in our southern cities. Drunkenness, debauchery, poverty, 
ignorance, disease, shame ! What will the Church of God do 
to meet these conditions ? It would be weakness and folly to 
wait until the forces of the enemy have possessed the land be- 
fore we rally our forces to meet them. The example of other 
cities that have been submerged should be a frightful warning 
to us. 

The churches should join hands in making these strategic 
points strongholds for Christ before it is too late. Church 
members must be educated to see the need and feel the respon- 
sibility. Workers must be trained ; money must be accumu- 
lated to conduct great missionary enterprises, both saving and 
preventive — educational and evangelistic. The down-town 
church, the great mission hall, the Christian settlement, rescue 
homes, hospitals — all will be needed. 

Women's Home Missionary Societies are by their very 
names designated as suitable agencies to undertake this work. 
They should be ready to fall in line with any advance move- 



28 The Burden of the City 

ment of the churches, or, if needs must, to take such advance 
step themselves. Their women should be studying the prob- 
lems of city missions in all their phases ; their young women 
should be trained as missionaries and deaconesses, that all may 
work together for the saving of our cities and the defense of 
our homes. 

SPECIAL PROBLEMS 

But more distressful because more immediate, 
even, than this coming crisis, is the negro prob- 
lem — a problem confronting the North as well as 
the South. "The sudden appeal of an enslaved 
race awaking to find its day of freedom " brings 
with it perils and difficulties that demand the wisest 
statesmanship and the most Christian forbearance. 
With it are associated problems that may not be 
solved by statecraft alone. They demand the co- 
operation of the Christian church, armed with 
the wisdom that is from above. The future of 
the black race as well as of the white, with whom 
its destinies have been so tragically interwoven, 
must be solved chiefly by the teacher and the 
missionary. 

The negro slums, perplexing enough in the 
North, assume in the South proportions and con- 
ditions that are appalling. In every city, town, 
and even village there is a growing tendency to 
segregation that produces a community within a 
community, not only of a different race, but one 
becoming more and more alienated from the 
white people. As the old slaveholders and ex- 
slaves die, the ties of mutual dependence and af- 
fectionate memories drop away and prejudice 



The Burden of the City 29 

and race antagonism make it more and more dif- 
ficult for the white people to minister to such 
communities or to influence them in higher 
things. They prefer their own preachers, whether 
educated or ignorant, good or bad, to white mis- 
sionaries, and as with the majority the idea of re- 
ligion does not include ethics or industry, the 
moral condition of a negro community sinks 
lower and lower— the worst element dragging 
down the children of the better— until nearly 
every such community tends to become a hope- 
less slum. 

Still the negro question, stupendous as it is, is 
less complicated than that of the foreign peoples. 
As Bishop Galloway says, "The negro speaks 
our language, reads our Bible, worships our God, 
believes in our flag, and will die for our country." 
The great apostle of industrial education for the 
black race, Booker T. Washington, before the 
National Educational Association in St. Louis, 
marshalled an impressive array of facts to prove 
that the negro responds readily to efforts for his 
improvement, and that through industrial train- 
ing he is to work out his salvation, ethically as 
well as materially. 

A TRINITY OF EVIL 

Closely interwoven with the conditions already 
named, are the awful problems of intemperance, 
pauperism and crime. Saloons multiply as we 
pass from the outlying residence districts to- 
wards the centre, and are ever the thickest where 



30 The Burden of the City 

people are poorest. This does not imply that the 
vice of drinking is confined to the poor and the 
working classes. The rich have other and less 
public ways of indulging their appetites, although 
the saloon may be banished from the boulevards. 
But among the poorer people, where homes are 
dark and crowded and club houses unknown, 
the saloon meets many demands besides that for 
drink. Room where a man may rest and smoke 
— cool in summer, warm in winter — a bit of 
"free" lunch, a free forum for the interchange 
of views on all subjects from the last act of 
Congress to the robbery next door — these attract 
the man as he comes wearied from the day's toil, 
even without the drink. 

The saloon has been called the " poor man's 
club." It is his club under conditions which 
make it almost a substitute for the home. Often 
his home is dark, dirty, and crowded with chil- 
dren and tubs. The food is innutritious and un- 
appetizing. There is the constant craving that 
comes from unsatisfied hunger, and it is easy and 
natural for the boy to become a tippler and the 
man a drunkard. Drink is not more a cause of 
poverty than it is an effect; but cause and effect 
are retroactive. Each tends to produce and in- 
tensify the other, while drink and poverty com- 
bined lead inevitably to either pauperism or 
crime; and so the awful work goes on. 

The " fearful statistics " of this crime against 
civilization, overwhelming as they are, cannot 
tell the story. The missionary sees it in appall- 



The Burden of the City 31 

ing iteration as she goes her rounds. She finds the 
squalid homes, the lifeless despair of the women, 
the neglected children, bearing in their baby faces 
the awful marks of degeneracy, and back of all 
— the visitor knows without the asking — is the 
old, old story, "My man, he drinks." In those 
words all is told — the strong form weakened and 
degraded, the shuffling step, the sullen temper, 
the frequent absences from home, sometimes 
prolonged into months, the terror of the absence 
scarcely less than the terror of the home-coming, 
all the terrible, swift sinking of a home into the 
blackness of darkness. "Didn't you know he 
drank when you married him?" It is the last, 
futile protest of the helpless helper. "Why do 
women marry men who drink?" 

"Oh, lady, he did not drink then — not to get 
drunk. Of course he drank his beer ; but he 
didn't use to get drunk when I married him." 

It is always "of course," though, recognizing 
the unaccountable prejudice of "church folks" 
against beer they keep the fact, as well as the 
pitcher, in the background until circumstances 
discover it. But this is rather a courtesy to the 
visitor than confession of guilt in the matter. 

"My man must drink beer," said one woman 
defensively. "He works in the furnace room 
and sweats all the time. He would die if he did 
not drink beer." The man was a converted 
drunkard and was conscientiously trying, as was 
his wife, to live up to the church standard ; but 
naturally he had occasional lapses. 



32 The Burden of the City 

" Can't he drink water?" 

" Water?" with a look of horror. "Seven, 
eight quarts every day ? Water is no good to 
stop the awful thirst. He would be sick to drink 
so much." 

" Then barley water — lemonade — coffee ? " But 
the woman shakes her head. These things are 
not at hand and the beer is. Beer fulfills all re- 
quirements, and beer it must be. 

"I often go into that cafe across the street," 
said a car conductor to his motorman, "and get 
a cup of their hot bouillion. It warms me up 
and is almost as good as a lunch." 

"As good as a glass of beer?" asked the 
motorman innocently. Just here is the situation. 
From their view-point beer is cordial, food, stimu- 
lant, and, if taken in sufficient quantities, forget- 
fulness of troubles. It is cheap and always at 
hand. The truly "good" man is he who also 
provides a generous supply for the wife and 
children at home. 

It is useless to attempt to analyze the relations 
between intemperance, pauperism and crime. It 
is enough that for the most part they stand or 
fall together, and that all have their lurking places 
in the city slums. It is there they must be fought 
with every weapon that Christian civilization can 
provide. 

On a certain street in a great city, where the 
social vice reeks and festers, five, eight, and in 
places even eleven saloons stand side by side, 
and from the windows above peep brazen faces. 



The Burden of the City 33 

There are no stores in that neighborhood — only 
the gilt balls of the pawn-shop and a few fly- 
infested groceries. All the demands of life are 
narrowed down to drink and lust. Humanity 
can reach no deeper depths than this. Every- 
where the open saloon marks the hurrying pace 
of humanity on its downward way. Banished 
from the protected homes on the boulevards, it 
tlaunts in gilded splendor where men gather in 
the great business centres. It multiplies as people 
grow poorer ; it prospers exceedingly as crime 
is added to poverty ; it reigns supreme where 
humanity has sunk into the lowest mire of 
beastliness. 

Facts and figures, arguments and statistics, 
have been hurled at society and the church for 
the past fifty years in damning evidence, and 
still the ruin goes on, because — there's money in 
it. If words could be coined so burning and 
bitter that they would bite like poisoned arrows 
into the heart and conscience, they should be 
used to tell the history of this fiend of drink 
that hastens men into poverty and drives them 
into crime. 

« OUT OF A JOB " 
But even aside from the temptations of drink, 
the steps down from self-respecting poverty into 
pauperism are fatally easy. Under present social 
conditions life is a scramble on an inclined plane. 
A few of the strongest reach positions of security 
at the top ; others barely maintain the struggle ; 
many must be swept down into the abyss. 



34 The Burden of the City 

A family was found one winter day in des- 
perate straits. The wife was prostrated under 
the double burden of motherhood and the 
task of supporting the family. Five children, the 
youngest an infant, were absolutely starving. 
The father, a weak but well-meaning man, had 
been for some time a victim of the drink habit, 
but was honestly trying to reform. It was most 
desirable that the family should not be further 
pauperized by charity, and as the daily papers 
were loudly insisting that times were good and 
there was "work for all," he was sent to the 
Bureau of Charities with a note detailing the 
circumstances and especially requesting that, if 
possible, work be found for him at once. He re- 
turned with a card and the information that if 
there should chance to come a snow-storm he 
might report with the card at a certain address 
and, if he were in season, he would probably 
be given a day's work shovelling snow. Rather 
a forlorn hope for a man with a starving 
family on his hands ! A sufficient number of 
such experiences will shake the foundations 
of the firmest faith in newspaper "good 
times." 

"The submerged tenth!" The words are 
pathetic — tragical. It means that one person out 
of every ten is overwhelmed by a great tidal 
wave of misfortune. It means that he is down 
and cannot rise. It may mean that he is too far 
gone even to want to rise. In London, it is said, 
one out of every four dies dependent upon charity. 



The Burden of the City 35 

In the four greatest American cities one in every 
ten is buried in the potter's field. 

SEEDS OF ANARCHY 

The daily papers — and it is our boast that the 
American workman reads the daily paper— ex- 
ploit the wanton extravagance of the "smart 
set." There are balls and dinners where enough 
money is spent for flowers to place whole fami- 
lies beyond want for their natural lives. There 
are frivolous fancies for which are paid a king's 
ransom. The infant heir of one family is smoth- 
ered in costly christening gifts of which he has 
no comprehension and which he cannot enjoy. 
At the same time the piano is loaded with pres- 
ents for the pug dog, among which is a diamond- 
studded collar and a box of superfine note paper 
bearing the name of the pampered pug and the 
family crest. 

Think what would be the mental attitude of a 
poor man who is not a philosopher, not a stoic, 
not an educated man trained to reason, only a 
poor foreigner out of employment who sees him- 
self and, worse, his wife and children, brought 
to starvation in a land of plenty, when he reads 
or hears of such wasteful, nay, absurd, extrava- 
gance. Would it be any wonder if he turned 
upon society, as a wounded thing turns upon 
that which crushes it, with venom and sting? 

An honest working man does not want alms 
but justice. He resents the idea of charity in the 
modern acceptation of the term, and demands of 



36 The Burden of the City 

society the right to provide for himself and his 
family by the strength of his own right arm. 
But he realizes keenly that any slight turn of the 
wheel of fortune may make beggars of himself 
and his loved ones; that, allowing for the ups and 
downs that naturally come into every family his- 
tory, he cannot by his best efforts provide against 
sickness and old age. Is it any wonder if he 
feels that there is still something radically wrong 
with the social order ? Untaught to think or to 
reason broadly— and few of us would reason dis- 
passionately upon an empty stomach — his pas- 
sions are stirred by demagogues who, with spe- 
cious appeals to what is really the best in the 
man, his manhood and his independence, incense 
him against the existing order of things as the 
sole cause of his wrongs. The representatives of 
the churches are a few small missions that he 
never enters. He may have had glimpses of 
their magnificent piles of gray stone on the 
avenues, and of the well-dressed people who 
worship there. Being outside of his ken, he 
naturally associates them with the unfeeling rich. 
There are not wanting those who tell him that 
the church is no friend to the poor man. Will he 
not believe it ? 

The great cities of our land are a spectacle to 
gods and men of corruption and misrule. New 
York, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Chicago rival 
each other in the unsavory distinction of being 
the worst governed cities on the globe. Smaller 
cities follow in their footsteps. From the alder- 



The Burden of the City 37 

man grown great by "graft," to the corner po- 
liceman who shuts his eyes on the gambling dens 
and brothels for a consideration, the poor man 
sees laws made by law-breakers, and executed 
by criminals. Is it any wonder if he reasons it 
out in his own mind that it would be quite as 
well if we had no laws at all ? 

Anarchy and nihilism are the natural outgrowth 
of dark ages of tyranny and oppression. There 
have been ages when the poor were trampled 
upon and despised; when feudal chiefs and over- 
lords grew rich upon their tears, their pain and 
their blood. But times are changing — have 
changed! The rich are realizing their responsi- 
bilities; the oppressed are feeling their power. 
Yet still there is injustice, still there are pain and 
poverty and unpaid toil, and still there will be the 
bitterness of strife between rich and poor, until 
the Gospel of Christ shall come to both with the 
message of peace. Let us rejoice, even in the 
strife, that it is the bitterness of living, not of dy- 
ing; it is the strife of progress, not of retrogres- 
sion and decay. 

RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCH 

When our primeval forests had fallen before 
the settler's ax and the virgin soil was laid bare 
to the sun, new and strange growths ran riot 
over it. Sometimes the undergrowth was cleared 
by burning and the following season the "fire- 
weed " would sweep the blackened acres with 
its purple bloom. This in turn would disappear 



38 The Burden of the City 

under the farmer's plow to make room for the 
seed-sowing. The anarchy of the dagger and 
firebrand is but the "fire weed" of our civiliza- 
tion, the natural exuberance of a soil teeming 
with the passion and pain of life, too full of 
power to lie fallow. The cure lies with the 
Church of Christ. If she will but recognize her 
opportunity in time, she may in the future reap 
from this very soil the peaceable fruit of right- 
eousness. But there must be no shrinking of 
labor, no stinting of sacrifice. The very life of 
Christ must be made manifest in the power of its 
love and patience, though it cost sweat of brow, 
and heart, and brain. These evils can never be 
killed out by hard words. Hate was never cured 
by hatred. Legislation may crush but cannot des- 
troy them. Only the power of the Gospel of 
Christ can overcome them, by planting love for 
hatred, and sacrifice for selfishness. Is the church 
ready to pay the price and prepare the soil for the 
coming of the kingdom ? It must be done in 
faith, as the farmer looks to the future for his 
harvest. "God's husbandry" may require the 
ages for its seasons, but the prophetic soul sees 
in the blind struggle of the present hints of a 
future when socialism shall become a recognition 
of the universal brotherhood of mankind, and 
anarchy shall be lost in a millennium whose only 
law shall be the law of love. 

This migratory, shifting population of the 
cities — irresponsible in itself, yet gifted under our 
social and political system with tremendous pos- 



The Burden of the City 39 

sibilities for evil — this foreign population, these 
11 unchurched masses," with all their dreadful 
problems of ignorance, sin and want, constitute 
from one-half to three-fourths of the population 
of our great cities. It is with them we have to 
do. Their burden is our burden — the burden of 
the city. How to lift it is the problem awaiting 
solution by the Church of Christ. It is the prob- 
lem of the century, and upon its solution wait the 
industries, the governments, the very existence 
of our civilization. 

No other cities in the world have been called 
upon to face a condition so difficult and so com- 
plex, sincte to the barriers of class and social posi- 
tion are added here the barriers of a score of dif- 
ferent races and languages, and also the estrange- 
ment of a form of religion incompatible with our 
national ideals and democratic institutions. 
" Our problem is the city, intensified by the per- 
plexities of every race and region of the whole 
world. For childhood, for womanhood, for 
manhood; for home, industry, education, relig- 
ion, social order; for charity, for government, for 
art, for commerce, for life, the American city has 
problems more intense, more far-reaching than 
have ever taxed the mind or tested the heart of 
humanity in all the ages." 

There is one power, and only one, that can re- 
deem these masses, and, saving them, save our 
cities and our nation from the materialism into 
which they are drifting, a materialism that leads 
by the short way into degeneracy and political 



4-0 The Burden of the City 

anarchy; one bond which alone can bind together 
the rich and the poor; one only power that can 
hope to cope with the grasping greed of the one 
party and the recklessness and degradation of the 
other, and this is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

It is true that the masses are not seeking salva- 
tion by the Gospel way. It is true that even 
where the church still holds the territory it does 
not always hold the people. It is true that thus 
far, with notable exceptions, the church has sig- 
nally failed to "reach the masses." But failure 
is not necessarily defeat. The church had grown 
confident with prosperity. It was complacently 
counting its own millions, rather than the millions 
of the lost world outside. It was devoting itself 
to its theologies, its self-culture, its star-search- 
ings, and the rapid onslaught of alien hordes took 
it unawares. Often a temporary defeat is need- 
ful to rouse to a sense of danger and the great- 
ness of the emergency. It is the cry, " The Phil- 
istines be upon thee!" to the sleeping giant. 
The church must arise and put on her strength 
and, counting not the cost, gird herself for a con- 
flict that will call forth all her resources. Was 
the Gospel of the Lord Jesus worth so much 
eighteen hundred years ago that men and 
women joyfully gave their lives for it at the 
stake and in the arena, and is it not worth some 
sacrifice now ? Is Christ so precious to-day in 
China that missionaries and converts will face 
torture and die together for His dear sake, and 



The Burden of the City 41 

can He not command even the wealth of His fol- 
lowers in New York and Chicago ? Let the need 
be clearly shown, let the challenge be sounded 
and we shall see. 

FOR THE WORLD AND THE CHURCH 

Not only does the destiny of our own country 
dependupon what answer the church shall make to 
these questions, but the destiny of foreign nations 
as well. What will be the fate of our foreign mis- 
sions when our cities have become wholly material- 
istic? We must "save America for the world's 
sake." More and more are home and foreign mis- 
sions sht>wn to be but varying phases of one 
problem. The heathen are within our own gates. 
Idolatry and all heathenish vices are in our cities, 
while in Japan, India, Africa, and the isles of the 
sea, it is American rum and English and American 
wickedness that offer the most serious obstacles 
to the progress of the missionary. Truly, "He 
does most to Christianize the world who does 
most to Christianize America, and he does most 
to Christianize America who does most to save 
our cities." 

Even if the appeal of the city were not enough 
to stir our missionary zeal, we must rally our 
forces for the sake of the church itself. No Chris- 
tian church worthy the name ever existed, no 
matter how poor, that was not a missionary 
church. Many a wealthy city church has degen- 
erated into a mere religious club; many a village 
church has been torn into petty factions, embit- 



42 The Burden of the City 

tered with gossip and littleness and envy, simply 
because it forgot that the church that seeketh its 
own life will lose it; while the church that gives 
itself for others — first for the lost ones around it, 
then for the homeland, then for the world — such 
a church grows rich with every dollar that it gives 
away, grows strong with every effort to lift up 
the fallen, glows with divine fire just in propor- 
tion as it seeks to carry its light and power to 
others. 

The question is not alone, Can the church save 
the masses ? but, Can the church save itself, ex- 
cept as it gives itself for the saving of the world ? 
The test of the church's vitality is its power to 
impart life to the dead mass around it. When it 
ceases to give life it ceases to live. When it shall 
have hopelessly cut itself off from the masses it 
will have dug its own grave, no matter how 
magnificent that grave may be. Such a church 
may prosper as a social club, or it may maintain 
a formal death-in-life existence, but as a church 
it is worse than a failure, because it has a name 
to live, and is dead. 

The reason is simple and not far to seek. The 
church can no more perform its mission as the 
" Body of Christ " without the power of His spirit 
than the electric engine can move a train, cut off 
from its dynamo. When the vital contact is 
made the most tremendous power known to man 
thrills its tiny arms, and it moves the great, dead, 
lumbering mass as easily as a child tosses a 
rattle. 



The Burden of the City 43 

And always the Christ spirit is the missionary 
spirit. The true Christian church can no more be 
an institution seeking merely to build itself up, 
than Christ could have lived seeking popularity 
and patronage for Himself. The church that does 
this is simply a human institution struggling 
against impossible odds. But inspired by a pas- 
sionate love for humanity it is linked to the one 
irresistible force of the universe. What if num- 
bers and all human probabilities are against it ? 
It does not matter; God has always moved the 
world by a minority. 

It is no pessimism to look discouraging facts 
squarely in the face, if at the same time we can 
look God in the face and claim Him on our side. 
We become discouraged only when we see dif- 
ficulties and forget God. 

STRONG POINTS 
By Dr. Josiah Strong 

The city is the Gibraltar of civilization. 

The city is to control the nation. Christianity must control 
the city ; and it will. 

The world can never be saved from misery until it is saved 
from sin ; and it never ought to be. 

If the church had faithfully inculcated the second law of 
Christ, she would have brought many more into obedience to 
the first. 

" Who is sufficient for these things ? " The church of Christ 
is fully sufficient if aroused — if her latent power is made 
active. 

The watchword of the old era was " Rights " ; that of the 



44 The Burden of the City 

new will be " Duties." The spirit of the old was, " I am as 
good as you " ; the spirit of the new will be, " You are as good 
as I." 

We have exceptional difficulties to overcome. What then ? 
Do such facts justify discouragement? A discouraged Chris- 
tian is a spectacle for angels. To a mighty faith the heaping 
up of obstacles is only a stimulus. The higher they rise the 
mightier the inspiration. 

The notion has prevailed that to become a truly spiritual man 
is to sign a quit-claim on this world and take out a mortgage 
on the next. But God has immense interest in this world, and 
an immense work to do here; and as an old proverb says, 
" God loves to be helped." 



GOOD SIGNS 

Industrial betterment is one of the main signs of present 
social advance. So many employers are now trying to benefit 
the condition of their employees that, as Dr. Strong says, " it is 
impossible even to chronicle, much less to describe their 
efforts." 

A new profession has come into existence through changing 
relations between employers and men. The Social Secretary 
makes it his or her business to know the employees personally 
and the conditions under which they work, and how to im- 
prove them if they are not what they ought to be. The Social 
Secretary of a department store has organized literary and 
physical culture clubs among the five hundred girls. She gives 
them advice and befriends them in various ways. The head 
of the department says she is worth three times what her serv- 
ices cost because of the improved social atmosphere of the 
store and the better condition of the girls physically and men- 
tally. 

Over four hundred children who, six months before, had 
never seen the stars and stripes and never spoken a word of 
English, recently participated in a patriotic demonstration in 



The Burden of the City 45 

New York City. These children came from Roumania, Ga- 
licia and the Polish provinces. To hear their songs as they 
lifted up their voices in " Hurrah for the Red, White and Blue," 
and waved Old Glory, was enough to stir the pulse of a man 
of iron. An immigrant only three months over gave an ad- 
dress of welcome in which he expressed the hope that " the 
deeds done by the fathers of our country and the heroes who 
fought and died for it would serve as examples for us all." 

Instances might be given within the writer's knowledge of 
the Golden Rule painted in large letters upon office walls and 
made the working rule of business; of workmen sending a 
committee to their employer and asking that their wages might 
be cut down sufficiently to increase his profits to a given figure ; 
of capitalists whose great object seemed to be not to accumulate 
money, but to increase the intelligence, morality and physical 
well-being cf their employees. The businesses referred to are 
eminently prosperous, and are not troubled with strikes and 
lockouts. — Josiah Strong in The Twentieth Century City, 

A letter written by a little twelve-year-old Italian to his 
teacher : 

" Dear and most graciotis Signora ; — I will write for you 
what you ask. My father has been two years in America, and 
he follows the trade of carpenter, and ... he would like 
to make of me an honest, industrious boy, with, at the same 
time, a trade better than his, and he sends me to school so that 
when I am grown I may be an educated man and useful to 
others. 

" Later I wish to make machines for factories, and thus have 
better wages than others. 

" Having nothing more to say I kiss my hand to you and as- 
sure you that I am 

" Your 

" GlULIO." 

FACTS 

There is added to Chicago every year a city of 35,000, and 
to New York a city of 50,000. 



46 The Burden of the City 

There are from three to six times as many churches for a 
given population in the country as in the city. 

The United States has increased its population three and 
one-half times since 1850, and its wealth fourteen times. 

The census of 1900 gives the population of the United States 
as 76,303,387, of which one-third are either foreign born or 
the children of foreigners. The later census estimate is about 
80,000,000. 

The evangelical bodies of the United States trace most of 
their church organizations directly to home missions. Congre- 
gationalists admit that four-fifths of their churches are of home 
missionary origin. Home missions pay. 



BIBLE LESSON 

The City Redeemed 

What picture does a prophet give of a city? (Nahum 
3- I-3-) 

How does another prophet enlarge upon the description? 
(Zephaniah 3 ; 1-4.) 

What prophet was sent to a city with a message of condem- 
nation? (Jonah I : I.) 

How did Ezekiel, in a vision, see the punishment of those 
who were indifferent to the wickedness of the city ? (Ezek. 
9: I and 4: 11.) 

Who wept over a doomed city ? (Matt. 23 : 37.) 

Why should not the Church be disheartened over the ap- 
parently hopeless condition of American cities? (2 Chron. 
14: 11.) 

What is the promise for those who repent? (Ezek. 36: 33.) 

What has been the prophetic dream of the world since the 
promise to Abraham? (Heb. 11 ; 10.) 

Read the picture of the Holy City. (Rev. 21 ; 10, II, and 
23- 2 7-) 



The Burden of the City 47 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

1. What encouraging feature is there in the attitude of 
modern society towards social conditions ? 

2. How shall we account for the existence and startling 
growth of cities ? What is the first mention of cities in the 
Bible ? The last ? 

3. By what process does the down-town church become 
estranged from its environments ? 

4. How many years is it since foreign immigration assumed 
alarming proportions ? What changes have taken place in the 
immigration of the last decade ? 

5. Why is the Roman Catholic Church strongest in the large 
cities ? 

6. What «is the tendency of Scandinavian immigrants as to 
selection of homes ? Germans ? Irish ? Bohemians ? Ital- 
ians ? Greeks ? Poles ? 

7. Name the prevailing religion and some race character- 
istic of each of these people. 

8. What social conditions have been intensified by the pre- 
dominance of foreign population in our cities ? 

9. What is the relation of the saloon to the working man 
and his home ? 

10. What conditions tend to produce the anarchy prevalent 
in many cities ? 

11. What is the comparative strength of the Catholic 
Church in the North and South ? Why ? 

12. How is the Panama Canal likely to affect missions in 
the South ? 

13. What responsibility has the Church, in both city and 
country, for solving the city problem ? 

14. How are home and foreign missions inter-related ? 



SETTLEMENT WORK 



THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD 

" He was a friend to man, and he lived in a house by the 
side of the road." — Homer. 

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn, 

In the place of their self-content ; 
There are souls, like stars, that live apart 

In a fellowless firmament ; 
There are pioneer souls that blaze their path 

Where highway never ran — 
But let me live by the side of the road, 

And be a friend to man. 

Let me live in a house by the side of the road, 

Where the race of men go by — 
The men who are good, and the men who are bad, 

As good and as bad as I. 
I would not sit in the scorner's seat, 

Nor hurl the cynic's ban. 
Let me live in a house by the side of the road, 

And be a friend to man. 

I see from my house by the side of the road, 

By the side of the highway of life, 
The men who press with the ardor of hope, 

The men who are faint with strife. 
But I turn not away from their smiles or their tears — 

Both parts of an infinite plan — 
Let me live in my house by the side of the road, 

And be a friend to man. 

— Sam Walter Foss. 



II 

SETTLEMENT WORK 

A NOTED infidel was once asked in con- 
versation how he thought he could im- 
prove upon the existing order of things, 
supposing himself in the place of Providence. 
He replied rather smartly, "I'd make health 
catching instead of colds, for one thing." 

Fortunately for humanity, the remark is as un- 
true in spirit as it is witty in form. The world is 
coming to know that the good things of life are 
''catching," as well as the evil. Society is learn- 
ing wiser social methods. As a healthful body 
and cheerful mind will resist physical contagion, 
even under dangerous circumstances, so the 
healthful soul will resist moral contagion. Un- 
selfish love is the best possible antiseptic. Not 
only so, but it carries with it a certain divine con- 
tagion, whereby those who come in contact with 
it are made better. This is the "power that 
moves to good" — a spiritual law in a natural 
world. The way to save the masses is not to 
stand aloof and administer bitter doses of pro- 
hibitions and anathemas, but to go and live the 
Christlike life among them until they catch some- 
thing of its inspiration and power. 

Another truth has been fastening itself upon 
5i 



52 The Burden of the City 

the social conscience — that the difference in people 
is not, after all, so great as had been supposed. 
As some one puts it, " The masses are about the 
same as other folks, only sometimes better." 
We are learning that apparent differences are 
often produced merely by outward conditions, 
and that hearts beat the same in palace and in 
hut; in fact, that each and every one of us is a 
unit in a great aggregation of "the masses." 
There have always been in a few prophetic souls a 
sense of this essential oneness of society, and an 
impulse to express it in practical living, but it is 
only within the last quarter century that this im- 
pulse has taken definite form and distinctive 
names. 

TYPICAL SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS 
Hull House, in Chicago, is considered the pio- 
neer "social settlement " in America. Its founder, 
Miss Jane Addams, regards Toynbee Hall in Lon- 
don as the source of her inspiration, if not her 
model. However, the "settlement idea" seems 
to have had as many discoverers as America. 
Older than either Hull House or Toynbee Hall is 
a Bohemian institution which can fairly claim 
precedence of either as a practical exponent of 
the true idea of a residential social centre. This 
fact is interesting, not because of any contest for 
historical honors, but simply because it points to 
a wider stirring of the social conscience than a 
single starting point would argue. In many lands 
the best hearts and brains were searching for true 



Settlement Work 53 

social consciousness, experimenting, bungling, 
no doubt, but making splendid failures that were 
in themselves an inspiration to greater effort. 

The Bohemian institution, " Betlemsky Placek,'' 
in Prague, was founded by Vojta Naprstek, a 
Bohemian patriot who, for the part he took in the 
revolutions of 1848, found himself at the age of 
twenty-two a political refugee in the United 
States. Devoted to American ideals he thought 
of starting a Bohemian colony in America whose 
members should become " filled with the demo- 
cratic spirit of freedom and neighbor love" and 
return to the motherland to be apostles of free- 
dom to, their poor and down-trodden country- 
men. At the end of ten years he was the only 
one to return, but he carried enthusiasm and 
ardor enough to fire a whole community. He 
went to devote his life to " his people, humanity, 
and social freedom. " " I am ready," he declared, 
"to sacrifice all for my convictions, and no lack 
of success will frighten me. My heart does not 
feel the need of evil in this world, and hence I 
would sacrifice all, demanding the same from 
every one else, that poverty and ignorance should 
vanish from the face of the earth." 

He opened his own house to his neighbors and 
the public, first one room, then two, and later 
the whole. And they came, scholars and states- 
men, women and little children, and then the 
masses. The wife and mother of Naprstek, not 
less devoted than himself, gave up everything to 
the work, not even reserving the comfort of beds 



54 The Burden of the City 

for themselves as they " would take up too much 
room." Everything was for the public. There 
were lectures — two thousand within twenty 
years. There were educational excursions and 
picnics for pleasure; industrial exhibits, clubs 
and classes innumerable, a library, reading-rooms, 
and distribution of food and clothing to the 
poor. Since the death of Naprstek in 1895, his 
widow has carried on the good work assisted by 
a board of trustees. A work so truly social in 
spirit, so self-sacrificing in execution, should 
surely place the name of its founder high up on 
the roll of the great lovers of mankind. 

During the eighties of the last century, Arthur 
Toynbee, a young University student of London, 
feeling the grievousness of the growing gulf be- 
tween rich and poor, was studying how he 
might devote his life with its talent and culture 
towards bridging it. His early death nipped his 
plans in the bud, but not until he had communi- 
cated his own ardor to some of his associates 
like-minded with himself. A band of young 
college men gathered around Rev. Samuel Bar- 
nett, vicar of St. Jude's Church in the notorious 
Whitechapel district. They organized them- 
selves into a " University Extension Society," 
occupying a house next to the church. It was 
their ambition to "live among the people." 
They joined the working men's clubs and in every 
way possible identified themselves with the life 
of the neighborhood, at the same time offering 
their commodious house as a centre for neigh- 



Settlement Work 5£ 

borhood gatherings and themselves as teachers 
and helpers. A good-sized audience room was 
named, in memory of the youth whose aspira- 
tions had given birth to the movement, Toyn- 
bee Hall. This name has gradually been applied 
to the entire institution, of which Canon Barnett 
is still the leader. 

One of the most unique features of this work 
from the first has been an annual free exhibition 
of fine paintings and other works of art. Such 
an innovation as this amid the sordid and repul- 
sive conditions of Whitechapel must have been 
startling, to say the least. But it is an article of 
Canon Barnett's creed that the sense of beauty in 
art is a means of moral and spiritual develop- 
ment. He considers the development of a love 
for "pictures and books" a most potent means 
of reform, as these are each one of the "many 
tongues by which God speaks to the soul of man." 

These art exhibitions have been marvellously 
successful, so far at least as local patronage is 
concerned. At a recent one (held in 1904) 
some five hundred choice works of art loaned by 
wealthy families were on exhibition, and the visi- 
tors during the first three weeks of the exhibit 
numbered 70,000. For these exhibitions cata- 
logues are carefully arranged that the wayfaring 
man need not err in detecting the hidden power 
and beauty in the works of art. Children are 
made especially welcome and taught by sympa- 
thetic guides to appreciate the masterpieces of 
painting and sculpture. 



56 The Burden of the City 

This art exhibition, however, is but one feature 
of an institution filled with activities the year 
round. Lectures are given on popular themes, 
social functions held in the beautiful drawing- 
rooms, and classes are conducted by the young 
men and the friends whom they are able to 
gather around them from the cultured and fash- 
ionable West End. At first the "residents," as 
the original club began to be called, were en- 
gaged in gainful occupations in the law courts or 
elsewhere during the day. Upon these, or upon 
private incomes, they depended for livelihood, 
and gave their evenings to work in the settle- 
ment, teaching clubs and classes or joining in the 
social gatherings. As the work has developed 
and become specialized, however, some salaried 
workers have become a necessity. 

It was the work of this settlement which most 
strongly appealed to Jane Addams, then a young 
woman travelling in Europe, and already deeply 
interested in the cause of social betterment to 
which she has since consecrated her life. 

Hull House, founded and still carried on by 
Miss Addams, and recognized as the most com- 
plete and effectively managed institution of its 
kind in existence, may be taken as the example 
and type of the purely social settlement in its 
most highly developed form. It is situated in 
one of the worst quarters of Chicago, on Halsted 
Street, which is said to be the longest city 
thoroughfare in the world. Running the entire 
length of the city, beginning and ending in open 



Settlement Work 57 

stretches of country, its course for a while is be- 
tween handsome residences with shaded walks 
and well-kept lawns, but soon it plunges into 
the strenuous life of the down-town district. The 
tiny grass patches flanking the sidewalks disap- 
pear. Shops, factories and saloons multiply. 
The din and roar of traffic stuns the ear; the air 
grows thick and smoky; the sidewalk is filled 
with people. The street becomes a maze of de- 
livery wagons, dump carts and vehicles of all de- 
scriptions loaded with every conceivable kind of 
wares. Street cars plunge through at intervals 
of two or three minutes, filled morning and 
evening«with a dense mass of humanity hanging 
to straps inside and clinging to steps and railing 
outside, and packing every available inch of 
space. Between the larger stores and factories 
are huddled cheap groceries, sordid fancy shops, 
and an occasional dwelling-house, smoke-black- 
ened and dingy. The display of wares on the 
street is most unsavory. Narrow streets and 
alleys branching off on either side afford vistas 
of wretchedness. There are sooty tenements, 
tumble-down sheds and foul stables. Dirty chil- 
dren in all sorts of demi-toilet swarm everywhere. 
They occupy the stairways, hang over the win- 
dow sills, and carry on their games on the side- 
walk in utter disregard of the public gaze, and, 
truth to tell, the public hurries on its way with 
as little attention for them. 

The names over the shop doors grow porten- 
tous. Masalis & Martjinkis, Isadore Yesariwitch, 



58 The Burden of the City 

Slephe&Jaffe,andDemetriosManussopoulisadver- 
tise their wares to the public and solicit patronage. 
Interspersed with these are signs in the unknown 
characters of the Hebrew or Yiddish. 

But presently through an archway one sees a 
flash of green grass and trees. A few steps and 
you are standing before the porticoed front of an 
old but dignified looking red brick house set well 
back from the sidewalk. The little court thus 
formed is well paved and clean, and benches in- 
vite to rest. You recognize instinctively that this 
is not a house thrown together by the exigencies 
of trade, but that it is a place with a history and 
a purpose. This is Hull House, and around it is 
crowded one of the most cosmopolitan popula- 
tions under the sun. Italians, Greeks, Russians, 
Poles, Germans, Jews, Bohemians and a score of 
other races to the number of 60,000 swarm 
within the area of a few blocks, and to all this 
building opens its doors of welcome. 

Around the central building have grown up 
half a block of connected buildings. Depart- 
ments of work have been added as their need 
became apparent. There is the "Jane Club," a 
cooperative boarding-house for working girls 
and women ; there is a picturesque restaurant or 
coffee-house copied from an old English inn, 
with low, dark rafters and diamond-paned 
windows, where for a moderate price you can 
be served with a wholesome luncheon in irre- 
proachable style. There is the "Children's 
House" with its kindergarten and day nursery. 



Settlement Work 59 

A playground was secured for the children by 
having half a dozen old tenements torn away 
and occupying the space with swings, summer- 
houses, "teeters," and sand piles. There is a 
large gymnasium, and an art gallery with studios 
for art classes; there are music rooms, a library 
and reading-rooms. Everywhere there is evi- 
dence of cultivated taste. Furniture is handsome 
and genuine ; no cheap or tawdry imitations are 
permitted. On the walls hang photographs 
from the masters of art. Friezes from the 
Parthenon, casts from Phidias and Praxiteles 
decorate halls and stairways. Even the chil- 
dren's rooms are furnished with choice pictures 
and casts from Delia Robbia and Donatello, and 
the wee tots climb upon chairs to kiss the im- 
mortal Mother and Child from Raphael. " Much 
is gained," says Miss Addams, "if one can begin 
in a very little child to make a truly beautiful thing 
truly beloved." 

A simple list of the multitudinous activities 
constantly going on in these capacious buildings 
would fill pages of the present volume. They 
touch every department of art, travel, industry, 
literature and social progress. Miss Addams has 
the rare faculty of gathering around her men and 
women of leadership who carry out their own 
plans untrammelled save by the predominant idea 
)f mutual good. About twenty persons areusually 
in residence. The governing power is vested 
in a simple organization among these. A hun- 
dred more come weekly to the settlement as 



60 The Burden of the City- 

lecturers, teachers, leaders of clubs, etc. It is 
estimated that two thousand people of the neigh- 
borhood come every week to share the benefits 
of the institution. 

Hull House has come to be a recognized in- 
fluence in social and labor circles, looking out 
for the interests of the laboring classes, yet often 
taking a conservative position and aiming to 
secure justice to all concerned. It is also a factor 
to be reckoned with in the politics of the ward. 
More than one disreputable " boodler " has owed 
his defeat at the polls to the opposition of Hull 
House residents. While it enjoys the confidence 
of labor unions, it has at least the wholesome 
respect of the capitalist class. Miss Addams is a 
recognized leader of the great onward sweep of 
thought in the direction of social righteousness. 
In its immediate neighborhood Hull House has 
produced cleaner streets, better sanitary condi- 
tions, better housing and better lighting. It has 
had a marked influence in purifying civic politics 
and is a " power house " of social and intellectual 
life and light as well as a school of ethical culture 
to a wide coterie of men and women. 

Naturally this institution has been an inspiration 
and example to scores of lesser ones. A recent 
Bibliography of Settlements, published in 1900, 
gives a list of one hundred of such scattered from 
New York to San Francisco, from Portland to 
New Orleans. Each of these emphasizes some 
features of the work carried on by Hull House, 
but to none is it given to provide so many points 



Settlement Work 61 

of contact with the people, nor to exercise so 
wide an influence upon the advanced thought of 
the day. 

But it is as a religious force that the work of 
the social settlement will be of especial interest to 
the young missionary with heart aglow with 
'Move for souls." At Hull House she will be 
perplexed and distressed, perhaps, to find no 
distinctively religious work even so much as 
suggested among the hundreds of lectures, 
classes and societies. She may find it difficult — 
perhaps impossible — to reconcile her ideals of a 
noble philanthropy with entire absence of that 
positive feligious element which she has been 
taught to consider the soul and source of every 
good work. 

To estimate the work of the social settlement 
fairly it must be remembered that not all re- 
formers are called to be apostles. It was the 
need of better environment for the poor that from 
the first appealed to Miss Addams. She felt that 
her call was to social rather than to spiritual 
evangelism. Her friend and co-laborer from the 
start was Miss Starr, a Catholic gentlewoman 
of wealth and culture, and of equal devotion to 
the cause of humanity. Together they went into 
the great city wilderness where a large majority of 
the people were of the Roman Catholic faith, and 
many of the remainder were Jews. To declare 
affiliation with any Protestant church Miss 
Addams felt would be to shut many doors of 
opportunity between them and the people. 



62 The Burden of the City 

However good people may differ as to the 
wisdom of this decision, no one can question the 
unselfish purpose and Christlike spirit that 
prompted the founders of this movement. Miss 
Addams herself says, "If we take religion to be 
synonymous with the spirit and life of Jesus 
Christ ; if we accept that definition which de- 
scribes it as ministration to the fatherless and 
widows in their affliction, and the keeping of a 
conscience unspotted from the world ; if to go 
about doing good be a sign of religion; if a 
reaching out of the hand to those who are down, 
be a sign of religion — then is the settlement 
religious through and through." 

It is certainly regretted by many who believe 
the evangelism of the city to be the one insistent 
problem of the times, that a woman so gifted 
with logical insight into the conditions and 
needs of the laboring classes could not have 
seen her way clear to undertake the solution of 
the problem of how to bring a vital, experimental 
Christianity to bear upon a community like that 
in which she labors. 

THE FIELD OF THE SETTLEMENT 

Another question will probably occur to one 
bent upon understanding the true inwardness of 
the relation of settlements to the people : Do 
they reach the poorest, the most degraded, or 
only the respectably poor, and the fairly well- 
to-do ? 

Certain it is that many — perhaps most — of the 



Settlement Work 63 

people who frequent the settlements would 
promptly resent being considered slum dwellers. 
It is equally certain that many of them come from 
homes that from an ethical or sanitary stand- 
point are not lit for human habitations. The fre- 
quent contrast between a miserable home and 
the young person who emerges from it, is an 
ever new surprise to the novice in missionary 
work. A certain young man who was a regular 
attendant at a settlement had never been seen 
there even of a week day evening and after a 
hard day's work except in unimpeachable toilet, 
with spotless collar and cuffs, and with hair 
neatly arranged. One day the settlement visitor 
stood in his home and looked about her in amaze- 
ment. Two tiny up-stairs rooms, a bare floor 
none too clean, a dirty, tumbled mass on the floor 
in one corner to do duty for a bed, a smoky bit 
of looking-glass over the sink in the living room, 
the only toilet convenience, rain leaking through 
the roof, dirt, confusion, disorder — this was the 
home from which he came; and an untidy old 
woman with head tied up in a bandana was the 
mother of whom he always spoke with sincere 
affection. The visitor retired with a profound 
sense of respect for one who could keep up even 
a show of appearances under such apparently im- 
possible conditions. 

The thrifty New England housewife may offer 
invidious remarks about people who " put every- 
thing upon their backs," but when understood, 
the situation is not illogical. The home is a com- 



64 The Burden of the City 

paratively unimportant factor in the social life of 
the poorer class. The price of rent and frequent 
removals owing to shifting labor conditions 
make a really comfortable, well-ordered home 
hopeless of attainment. Hence it becomes 
merely a shelter, a makeshift, a base of opera- 
tions. The social standing of the individual is 
fixed by his personal appearance. Few of his 
friends and fewer of his acquaintances ever see 
his home, or even know where it is. Hence, 
just so long as a spark of ambition remains, effort 
will be expended in making the personal appear- 
ance as prepossessing as possible. 

It is true that the settlement appeals to those in 
whom ambition is not wholly lost — the enter- 
prising, forward-looking element, which happily 
does exist even among the poorest. It furnishes 
to these opportunity and incentive to rise. It 
offers a strong hand to those inclined to climb. 
And so it often happens that those whose ideals 
have been formed by reading tales of abject desti- 
tution and who expect to encounter at every turn 
emaciated forms clothed in rags and tatters, find- 
ing instead alert, wide-awake, fairly well-dressed 
young people, will feel that somehow they have 
been imposed upon with tales of destitution that 
does not exist. It will be well in such cases to 
withhold judgment until ulterior conditions have 
been investigated. In any case, no one who has 
experienced the almost utter hopelessness of try- 
ing to help the pauperized or the well developed 
criminal and vagrant classes, will feel inclined to 



Settlement Work 65 

criticise measures that are preventive rather than 
curative. Far better to lend a hand before the 
individual has lost spirit and hope than to wait 
until ambition and self-respect are gone, and 
then, by lavish expenditure of money and effort 
try to drag him from the ditch into which he 
should never have fallen, and which at best will 
leave its smirch. 

CHRISTIAN SETTLEMENTS 

But giving the purely social settlement all its 
due, there are still many who believe that it 
comes far short of meeting the deepest need. 
There are many who profoundly believe that the 
gospel of,the Lord Jesus Christ directly applied is 
the greatest uplifting force known, even to social 
science, and that experimenting with ethical cul- 
ture and social reforms without direct religious 
effort is, to use the language of a noted mission- 
ary worker, trying to "elevate the masses with- 
out the elevator.'' And not only so, but they be- 
lieve that in depending wholly upon education 
and culture the "good'' really becomes "the 
enemy of the best." Such teachers recognize 
these other agencies as good in themselves and as 
affording a needed point of contact with the peo- 
ple; but with greater or less insistence they be- 
lieve that the teachings of the Bible and the doc- 
trines of the church should be made the basis of 
all work with the masses. 

THE CHICAGO " COMMONS " 

An excellent example of the social settlement 



66 The Burden of the City 

in which the religious element is also recognized 
is "The Commons" of Chicago, which recently 
celebrated its tenth birthday. The head resident, 
Prof. Graham Taylor, also occupies the chair 
of Christian Sociology in the Theological Semi- 
nary (Congregational) and at the same time acts 
as pastor of the Tabernacle church, affiliated with 
the settlement. Professor Taylor is especially 
successful in reaching the working man. A 
marked feature of the work of the Commons un- 
til quite recently was the Tuesday night men's 
meetings. x At these meetings socialists and 
capitalists, anarchists and ministers of the gospel, 
divinity students and saloon-keepers, met on ab- 
solutely equal terms. Each had a right to an ex- 
pression of his opinion, providing he kept within 
parliamentary rules. Men of world-wide renown 
might be heard here as lecturers. It was an edi- 
fying spectacle to see some low-browed saloon- 
keeper or wild-eyed anarchist in working clothes 
"square off" and take issues with such men as 
Rev. Washington Gladden or Dr. Howard Crosby. 
But though "fair field and no favor" was the 
rule of the game in these meetings, the personal 

1 Professor Taylor says in The Commons for February, 1904, 
" The wisdom and safety of the settlement free speech policy 
has been strikingly demonstrated at Chicago Commons. Our 
Tuesday evening free floor discussions, which for seven years 
were even more enjoyed by those who attended them than they 
were bitterly criticised by those who did not, have fulfilled their 
mission and been superseded by something more valuably con- 
structive. The rampant radicalism which found its first vent 
here toned down and almost totally subsided in the full exer- 
cise of its freedom. The free floor was discontinued last fall 
and the Community Club took its place." 



Settlement Work 67 

influence of Rev. Graham Taylor himself could 
but count largely on the side of righteousness. 
A burly, red-nosed antagonist who had been 
roundly denouncing all law and all religion dur- 
ing one of the meetings was heard to remark as 
he edged his way out in the crowd, "Now that 
Graham Taylor— just so far as there can be such 
a thing as a Christian, he's one." 

Another interesting feature of this settlement 
work is the Children's Church of which mention 
will be made in another chapter. 

The Commons is also a fair type of the college 
settlement found in most large cities. This is 
often established by the sociological or philan- 
thropic department of a college or university in 
order to afford a point of contact between its 
students and the down-town districts, for mutual 
benefit. The settlement brings to the university 
the problems of real life. To the student it be- 
comes a social laboratory — an experiment station 
— and it supplements the theological training of 
the divinity student. There is usually some 
official connection between the managements of 
the two institutions, and professors and students 
are expected to take up work in the settlement 
wherever practicable. The extent to which the 
college settlement is religious in its methods de- 
pends of course upon the attitude of the affiliated 
school and the personnel of the head workers. 

MISSIONS 

It will be seen how naturally, by increasing the 



68 The Burden of the City 

emphasis placed upon religious instruction and 
affiliating the work with a church instead of the 
school, the "settlement" becomes a " mission." 
Indeed, there is no accepted definition for a 
settlement, and no line of demarkation between 
the settlement and the mission, though in plan 
and purpose their work is vitally different. 
Owing to the popularity of the settlement idea 
and the tendency of human nature towards 
fadism, many real missions have called them- 
selves settlements, and thus both names lose 
their significance. 

The idea chiefly emphasized by the earliest 
settlement workers was that of residence among 
the people. But this plan had been early adopted 
by mission and Salvation Army workers, who 
often really share the life of the people to an ex- 
tent unimagined by the residents of the social 
settlement. So this attempt at distinction really 
did not distinguish at all. Perhaps it would be 
better if a more exact nomenclature could be ob- 
served, using the term " settlement " where effort 
is directed chiefly towards social betterment and 
the improving of the whole environment of the 
poor; while the terms "missions," "church 
homes," "parish houses," etc., would properly 
distinguish institutions in which the reformation 
of society is believed to begin with the individual, 
depending upon a change of heart and life — 
whether this reformation is aided much or little 
by educational and social agencies for the im- 
provement of his environment. 



Settlement Work 69 

Still, it is a matter of regret that in many mis- 
sions more recognition is not given to the value 
of culture and beauty as a means of spiritual de- 
velopment. Many mission buildings are an 
offense to good taste, both as to architecture and 
furnishings. Usually this is necessitated by a 
lack of funds, but often by lack of consideration 
as well, or it may be due to the opinion not in- 
frequently expressed, that such rooms need not 
be above the average of the neighborhood, as 
the poor " would not feel at home in them " — 
a pernicious mistake, which can only be a 
hindrance to the best work of the institution. 
Man, in making the city, has produced scenes of 
ugliness and squalor unspeakable, but God made 
"everything beautiful in its season." Scarce a 
trace of His handiwork is seen amid the narrow 
streets, the crazy stairways and crooked passages, 
the sheds and tenements that constitute the 
"city wilderness " with its horrible atmosphere 
of sooty dinginess. If there can be but one 
place in a neighborhood where grace and 
symmetry and harmonious coloring can gratify 
the beauty-starved souls of the poor, let it be the 
house devoted to the worship of God. Where 
homes are ugliest and surroundings most bare 
and sordid, there is greatest need of these touches 
of brightness and beauty. "The best for the 
neediest," is only a practical application of simple 
Christianity. 

GLENN HOME 

An admirable example is given by Glenn In- 



7<D The Burden of the City 

dustrial Home in Cincinnati, conducted by the 
Woman's Home Missionary Society of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. This Home, which 
takes commendable pride in its beautiful head- 
quarters, occupies a fine stone front mansion, 
formerly a family residence. The handsome 
mirrors, bookcases and chandeliers remain, and 
other furnishings were made to correspond. 
The result is at once elegant and homelike. 

This institution announces its belief that the 
way to reach the masses is "to go to them and 
stay with them three hundred and sixty-five days 
in the year/' and follows this statement with the 
truly orthodox one that "the way to regenerate 
the city is to regenerate every individual in it." 
With a sufficient number of institutions like this 
the result might not seem so far from accomplish- 
ment. 

The Home employs about twenty-five workers 
— missionaries, deaconesses and teachers. Seven 
of these are residents. The industrial depart- 
ment is very complete, comprising sewing and 
dressmaking and cooking classes, basket weav- 
ing and other branches. The culture work in- 
cludes girls and boys' gymnastic classes, voice 
training and choral work. Three kindergartens 
are conducted and various clubs and classes for 
both children and adults meet here. A board- 
ing club offers a comfortable home to young 
working girls at three dollars a week. 

The work is permeated through and through 
by the evangelistic spirit. The prayer-meeting 



Settlement Work 71 

and Sunday-school are regular features. Mothers' 
meetings held in connection with the kinder- 
gartens, open and close with devotional ex- 
ercises. The leaders are women interested in 
the spiritual as well as the intellectual conditions 
of their people and find opportunities for many 
heart to heart talks with the mothers. The 
children of gamblers and saloon-keepers repeat at 
the home table the little ''grace " they have been 
taught at kindergarten, and the parents tell this 
to the workers with smiles .and tears. Mothers 
learn from the children the hymns and Bible 
verses. 

An effort is made here to induce the mission 
children 'to attend the neighboring church as 
often as possible. It was observed that when 
the children were well dressed they liked to at- 
tend the grand church, but when their clothes 
were shabby they slipped back into the mission 
again. This effort to break down the walls of 
caste by bringing the poor to the rich as well as 
the rich to the poor can but commend itself. 

Another wholesome feature of Glenn Home is 
the organization of various societies among the 
poor whose avowed object it is to help others. 
This principle has been too much overlooked. In 
their first generous impulse missions gave freely 
to the people around them. They gave money, 
food, clothing, services, but no opportunity 
for a reciprocal relationship. The consequence 
was that with the best and most unselfish motives 
in the world whole communities have been pau- 



72 The Burden of the City 

perized. Missions came to be shunned by the 
self-respecting poor and plundered by the un- 
scrupulous, while even the class who sought 
them in all sincerity for spiritual help, having no 
demands made upon their activities, gradually 
sank to an attitude of dependence, taking for 
granted that they were to be carried to heaven, if 
not on flowery beds of ease, by some equally 
eleemosynary method. But it is coming to be 
recognized that the poor are no more to be de- 
prived of the right to pay for what they have, or 
of the pleasure of giving to others according to 
their ability, than of any other right or privilege 
under the sun. In Glenn Home a missionary 
society is organized which meets semi-monthly 
and gives as conscientiously as richer societies. 
A band of young ladies are doing similar work, 
and often raise money for their small dues of 
twenty-five cents a year by real self-denials. 
Even the little ones are not forgotten. Two 
hundred and eighteen children are enrolled in a 
missionary society where they are taught the 
wholesome lesson that the chief aim in life is not 
getting but giving. Their contributions for a 
year amounted to thirteen dollars. What they 
gained in development of character cannot be es- 
timated in figures. Two other societies, the 
Glenn Home Auxiliary and the Cheerful Work- 
ers, helped towards the support of the institution 
itself. The latter dressed dolls for the mission 
Sunday-school, gave the children their Easter 
eggs, made little garments for the needy ones of 



Settlement Work 73 

the kindergarten, purchased a ton of coal for the 
mission, and sent two basket dinners to needy 
families at Christmas. If it is more blessed to 
give than to receive, such giving as this is indeed 
charity "twice blessed." 

FOREIGN MISSIONS AT HOME 

The presence in our cities of foreign populations 
in crowded districts is a challenge to missions. 
It costs something in money to send a missionary 
across seas to Africa, to China, to India, and to 
support him there; it costs more in loss of life 
and health from unfavorable climates and unac- 
customed ways of living. Providence is now 
sending the nations to us. Since 1857, three 
hundred thousand Chinamen have come to dwell 
among us, paying their own transportation and 
expenses. They burn incense to idols in their 
joss-houses in New York and Chicago. Catholic 
Italy and atheistic Bohemia are within our gates. 
The appealof Africa in America is not less im- 
perative because it lacks the glamour of distance. 
The churches are awaking to this need, but the 
awakening is not swift enough for the crisis. 
There must be a multiplication of efforts and an 
increase of efficiency along all lines. The battle 
must be won within the present quarter century. 

Enough is being done to inspire greater effort. 
The Congregational church points with pride to 
the fact that in the past twenty years it has in- 
creased the number of its German churches in 
America from twenty to one hundred and forty- 



74 The Burden of the City 

two; its Bohemian from none to forty-nine; its 
Scandinavian to one hundred and ten. This is 
largely due to home missionary efforts. First, a 
lone woman going through alley and byway 
making friends with the children and coaxing 
them into a little Sunday service; then a Sunday- 
school organized over a shop or a saloon, per- 
haps; next a mission with its appeal to fathers 
and mothers; then a church with a building and 
pastor of its own — this is the history that repeats 
itself in the progress of missions as we seek to 
aid in answering our own prayer, " Thy kingdom 
come." Presbyterian and Baptist, Methodist 
and Lutheran Reformed have done enough, at 
least, to forever settle the question whether for- 
eigners are accessible to the Gospel. They can 
be reached by loving ministry and faithful 
preaching, here as well as in lands over the seas. 
Dr. Clark, who perhaps knows as well whereof 
he speaks as any man in America, says: 

It has been forever established that foreigners are as con- 
vertible as our own people, that in many instances their faith 
is more pure and evangelical than the American type, that their 
lives are transformed by its power to an extent that sometimes 
puts the American Christian to shame, that their children are 
easily gathered into Sunday-schools, their young people into 
Christian societies, and their men and women into prayer-meet- 
ings, where in many different tongues they yet speak and pray 
in the language of Canaan. 

The immigration problem is not the same menace that it 
was. A mighty solvent has been found, and with a few men 
willing to devote sums of money commensurate with the great- 
ness of the demand, we may hope to see the successes of the 



Settlement Work 75 

past twenty years multiplied indefinitely and the gravest mis- 
sionary problem of the twentieth century on its way to a 
triumphant solution. 



FROM SETTLEMENT WORKERS AND 
SOCIOLOGISTS 

There is no secular. — Graham Taylor. 

Diminish charity by increasing justice. Almost every evil is 
a travesty of something good. The settlement is not for the 
rich only, nor for the poor only, but for all classes as the Lord 
mixes them ; not only for those who toil but for those who suf- 
fer from idleness. — Jane Addams. 

Men think there are circumstances when one may deal with 
human beings without love, and there are no such circum- 
stances. One may deal with things without love; one may 
cut down trees, make bricks, hammer iron without love, but 
you cannot deal with men without love. — Tolstoi. 

If every one who professes to care about the poor would 
make himself the friend of one poor person, forsaking all others, 
there would soon be no insoluble problem of "the masses," and 
London would be within measurable distance of becoming a 
city of happy homes. — Canon Barnett. 

The problem of how to save the slums is no more difficult 
than the problem of how to save the people who have moved 
away from them and are living in the suburbs, indifferent to the 
woes of their fellow mortals. The world can be saved if the 
church does not save it. The question is, can the church be 
saved unless it is doing all in its power to save the world ? — 
Graham Taylor. 

AMONG THE PEOPLE 
" Yes, I vent oud vashing till I vas fifty years old. Den I 
mus' stop. I could vork no more. I strained my back one day 
to lift a big tub, und I had to lie in bed many veeks und spent 



76 The Burden of the City 

all what I had saved for de doctor und for medicine. It iss 
hard, Miss Marrie, to vork hard effery day, all de time, till you 
are fifty years old und den be sick und haf not anyting. 

" But I haf paid for dis place, all but two hundred tollars. 
De man comes und gets seven tollars int'rest money effery six 
months. He iss fery strict. When I do not pay right up he 
vill — what you say ? close de — foreclose de mortgage, yes, dat 
is it. O Miss Marrie, if I lose dis place what vould I do ? I 
haf no children; I haf to go to de poorhouse." 

Wiping her eyes she continued, " I use' to rent dis place for 
twelf tollars a month, but now I get only six tollars. I rent 
de front part und de peoples pay me six tollars. Den I us' to 
rent dese two rooms (kitchen and bedroom) for five tollars, und 
I live in de little room where you see de old lady. Now I let 
her haf dat room ; she pays no rent. 

" Why don't I rent dem now and take that room again my- 
self? My! What vould the old lady do? Her children 
turned her out; she must have some place to live. 

" Oh, veil, I get along. I liff plain und pay all my expenses 
and my int'rest, too, out of de six tollars de people in front pay 
me." 

And there was no sigh of self-pity from the woman with 
misshapen feet and a crutch who, living on six dollars a month, 
could yet give shelter to one more unfortunate than herself. 



" No, he's gettin' no better. He has four and five fits every 
day'm. His father pays out all he can earn on the poor b'y, 
but nothing seems to help 'im. If there was only some place 
to send 'im — but there ain't. What will the b'y do after I'm 
gone ? His father must work ; he can't stop by 'im all day in 
the house. 

" My man is a fool of a thing when he has liquor in 'im. He 
didn't use to drink. 'E's a good man when 'e's sober. He 
works for the Steel Manufacturing Company. You know the 
steel dust flies up in their eyes and after awhile they can't see 
so well, and then they don't get so much pay. 



Settlement Work 77 

" Well, my man ho got kind of discouraged when his sight 
began to fail 'mi, and 'c took to drinking. Now 'e gets drunk 
most every week. 

" It don't do no good to pray, Miss Marrie. I've prayed and 
prayed. If prayin' ud do any good 'e'd a-stopped drinkin' long 
ago." 

And the visitor who had imagined herself almost a temper- 
ance crank wondered whether, if she were obliged to work at 
something that was gradually destroying her sight, and saw her 
pay decrease day by day — whether she too, might not take to 
drink, or to anything that promised a momentary forgetfulness. 
— The Commons. 



PRACTICAL HINTS 

" I will bless thee — and thou shalt be a blessing." — Gen. 
12: 2. 

Does God give us blessings without intending that we shall 
make them a blessing to others ? 

May it not be as much a duty to make a home a blessing to 
the homeless, as to give of our time, our money, or any other 
talent with which the Creator has endowed us, to those who 
need ? Millions of the world's toilers do not know the shelter 
and rest of a home. Millions more have homes where igno- 
rance, discord, poverty, or shiftlessness make the home a hell, 
Has not the home a message for the world as truly as the indi- 
vidual? No world-weary man or woman can enter a refined, 
Christian home without feeling its benediction. No degraded 
or undeveloped life can come within its influence without feel- 
ing its spell. Its very walls speak of peace and purity. 

" How kindly they all talk to each other," one guest in a 
good home was heard to say to another. 

" Yes, and it's always just like that," was the reply. "I've 
noticed it. You never hear any loud talk in this house." 

The missionary, the preacher, are professional friends. The 
settlement is the professional home. But the world needs un- 



78 The Burden of the City 

professional service even more. If every individual and every 
home stood for all to the world that God intended, there would 
be no need of either missionaries or settlements. Their pro- 
fessional influence may be more far-reaching, but the unprofes- 
sional touch is the tenderer. 



Perhaps there are young men and women all around you liv- 
ing in boarding-houses, who need the softening touch of home 
and mother. What if you were to invite a few of them in oc- 
casionally for a social evening, and share with them your music, 
your pictures, your books, yourself? Are there not around you 
unpopular people, neglected people, even disagreeable people, 
whom it might be worth your while to study and " discover " ? 
Open to them your home and your heart— not the one without 
the other, mind— and see if in doing this the Christ does not 
come in, making both strangely sweet with His presence. 

Such hospitality would not count much in social advance- 
ment ; it might not cancel any social obligations ; but Christ 
went not to those that He needed most, but to those who 
needed Him most. And we are His followers. 



Miss Helm, in Our Homes, suggests a way in which South- 
ern women may make their beautiful homes a blessing. 

" A growing evil is the lack of industrial training among 
young colored women. The chaplain of a state penitentiary 
once told me that three-fourths of the prisoners there were 
negroes and that, with rare exceptions, none of these had 
knowledge of any kind of work whereby they could earn an 
honest living. 

" There are hundreds of localities in the South where schools 
that give industrial training are out of the reach of young 
negro girls. Their mothers are usually incapable of teaching 
them. Why could not our Christian women have industrial 
classes in their own homes? Every housekeeper has in her 
house all that is needed for such classes in cooking, house clean- 
ing, sewing, and, perhaps, laundry work. One or two after- 



Settlement Work 79 

noons a week given to a course in plain cooking, bread mak- 
ing, etc., may turn out some good cooks who could be given a 
certificate which would secure them steady employment. A 
small price might be set on the lessons, just enough to meet ex- 
penses, and give a feeling of independence. In the same way 
a class in housekeeping could be instructed in scrubbing, clean- 
ing, sweeping, dusting, bed-making, table setting and dish 
washing. The sewing class could be made much more practi- 
cal than the ordinary sewing school for children." 



A richly attired woman came to a missionary to see about 
finding a place for a woman who had seen better days, but was 
left in her old age destitute and homeless. The institution in 
question was full, and the missionary could suggest no feasible 
plan for her support. 

In the conversation it transpired that the poor woman was 
an old friend of the rich woman's mother, and was a gentle- 
woman in spite of poverty. 

" Could you not take her into your own home ? " was asked. 

" My home ? Oh, impossible ! My house is really not large ; 
when the family are all at home I have only one guest-room, 
and we entertain a great deal. It could not be thought of! " 

" A woman in my district who has but one bed took in a 
poor woman and her child off the street, the other day," said 
the missionary. " She slept on the couch, and her husband 
took the floor, and gave their only bed to their guest." 

" Dear me ! " incredulously. " But really, it's different, you 
know. When one has a nice house one likes to — don't smile ! 
I suppose this woman — well, it's easier to give when you 
haven't very much, now, isn't it ? " 

" It's easier to give when one has suffered one's self, and 
knows what it means." 

"Yes, I suppose that's it." And she " went away sorrowful, 
for she had great possessions." 



8o The Burden of the City 



COLLATERAL READING 

No movement of modern philanthropy has been so widely 
written up as Settlement Work. In 1900 there were already at 
least a dozen published volumes on the subject, which have 
been numerously increased since. At the same time the work 
has furnished material for magazine articles, stories, novels, 
" work-ups " in daily papers innumerable. We name a few of 
the volumes. 

The Commons, edited by Prof. Graham Taylor, is a maga- 
zine of general settlement literature. It stands for " Industrial 
justice, efficient philanthropy, educational freedom, and the 
people's control of public utilities." 1 80 Grand Avenue, Chi- 
cago. |ia year. 

The College Settlement Association begins the publication of 
a study course, consisting of brief syllabi upon social subjects 
with references for further study. The first three of these just 
out are, No. 1, Biographies of Social Leaders ; No. 2, Modern 
Philanthropy ; No. 3, The Morals of Spending, Others are 
forthcoming. Information obtained from the secretary of the 
Association, Miss Sarah Graham Tomkins, 1904 Walnut Street, 
Philadelphia. 

Bibliography of College, Social and University Settlements, 
editions of 1893, 1895 an( * I 9°°- Published by the College 
Settlements Association, Secretary, Sarah Graham Tomkins, 
1904 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. 

Hull House Maps and Papers. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 
New York. $2. 

Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams. Macmillan 
Co. $1.25. 

The Duke of Cameron Avenue, by Henry Kitchell Webster. 
A story of settlement life. Macmillan Co., New York. J 1.50. 

The City Wilderness, a study of the South End (predomi- 
nantly Irish) ; " Americans in Process," a study of the North 



Settlement Work 8l 

End (predominantly Italian), and the West End (predominantly 
Jewish). A scries of papers by the residents of the South End 
House, Boston, edited by Robert A. Woods, Head Resident. 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. #1.50 each. 

The Leaven in a Great City, by Lillian Betts. Illustrated, 
Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $ 1. 50. 

Down in Water Street, The story of the Jerry McAuley 
Mission, New York, by Samuel H. Hadley. Fleming H. Rev- 
ell Co., New York and Chicago. $1. 

BIBLE LESSON 

How did Christ answer the question, " Which is the great 
commandment ? " (Mark 12 : 29-31.) 

Which halt of this commandment does Moses emphasize ? 
(Deut. 6:5; 10 : 12 and 30 : 6.) 

Is " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" found in the 
Old Testament? (Lev. 19: 18, last clause.) 

How did the Jews interpret the word " neighbor " ? (Lev. 
19 : 18, first clause.) 

How did Christ extend the application of this word ? (Luke 
10:29,36,37.) 

WTiich half of the Great Commandment was emphasized by 
the apostles ? (James 2 : 8 ; I John 3 : II, 14.) 

Which by Paul ? (Romans 13:9; Gal. 5 : 14.) 

Which by Christ? (St. John 13 : 14, 35; St. John 15 : 12, 17.) 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

1. Describe the contagion of good. 

2. Upon what two truths is the settlement idea based ? 

3. Should the settlement be regarded as a discovery, or as 
an advance movement of the social consciousness ? 

4. Name three pioneer settlements in three different coun- 
tries, and the founder of each. 



82 The Burden of the City 

5. Tell some characteristic enterprises carried on in each of 
these settlements. 

6. Describe the location of Hull House. 

7. What real good has Hull House accomplished for the 
community in which it is situated ? What for society at 
large ? 

8. How does the Chicago " Commons " differ from Hull 
House ? 

9. What resemblances and what differences exist between 
the settlement and the mission ? 

10. Why are beauty and good taste essential adjuncts to suc- 
cessful work among the very poor ? 

11. What are our nearest foreign missionary fields ? 



THE MODERN CHURCH AND ITS 
METHODS 



WHAT HE SAID 

I said, " Let me walk in the fields." 

He said, " No, walk in the town." 
I said, " There are no flowers there." 

He said, " No flowers, but a crown." 

I said, " But the skies are black ; 

There is nothing but noise and din." 
And he wept as he sent me back ; 

«• There is more," he said, " there is sin." 

I said, " But the air is thick, 

And fogs are veiling the sun." 
He answered, " Yet souls are sick, 

And souls in the dark, undone." 

I said, " I shall miss the light ; 

And friends will miss me, they say." 
He answered, " Choose to-night 

If I am to miss you, or they." 

I pleaded for time to be given. 

He said, "Is it hard to decide ? 
It will not be hard in heaven 

To have followed the steps of your Guide." 

Then into his hand went mine ; 

And into my heart came he ; 
And I walk in a light divine 

The path I had feared to see. 

— George MacDonala. 



Ill 

THE MODERN CHURCH AND ITS 
METHODS 

THERE are at least four distinct types of 
city churches, and the methods used by 
each are as different as the types of peo- 
ple it aims to reach. The family church of the 
well-to-do suburban districts is, even in outward 
seeming, handsome, decorous and dignified. Its 
air of prosperity extends from stained glass win- 
dows to carpeted pew. Its people come from 
homes equally tasteful and refined. The ordinary 
functions of church activity fill all requirements 
of the community about it and are carried on 
with a success commensurate with the ability of 
the pastor and the zeal of the members. 

A little nearer the business centres stands the 
church of the "boarding-house districts." It 
feels the restless stir of down-town life and takes 
on various new forms of activity. Its member- 
ship is uncertain — here to-day, gone to-morrow. 
Its constituency live in rented flats and apart- 
ment houses, and about every fifth house dis- 
plays in its windows the sign, "Furnished 
rooms," or, "Board by the day or week." The 
neighborhood swarms with students, clerks, 
business and professional men. It is shifting, 

85 



86 The Burden of the City 

critical, hurried, worldly. The church which 
draws and holds this class must be wide-awake, 
up-to-date, perhaps slightly novel or sensational 
in its methods. Its problems are by no means 
easy, and they grow more and more serious year 
by year, as the real down-town element spreads 
outward and the slum creeps nearer. 

Then there are the great down-town congrega- 
tions, usually meeting in a convenient hall or 
theatre, where some magnetic speaker draws his 
weekly audience of thousands. This is made up 
of " transients" — business and travelling men 
from the hotels, visitors to the city, etc., with an 
admixture of residents from the outlying districts 
drawn by the fame and personality of the 
speaker. It includes representatives from all 
ranks in life except the lowest. This type of 
church usually has but slight organization and 
attempts little work beyond the Sunday morning 
service. But this service is a magnificent oppor- 
tunity and is magnificently improved. To see 
the human flood pouring from one of these great 
metropolitan churches at the close of the service 
is to realize that still the Christ " lifted up" can 
draw the multitudes to Himself. 

The fourth type is the problem which these 
other three have to solve in addition to their own. 
It is the mission, or the institutional church, 
situated in the city's heart. 

A DOWN-TOWN CHURCH 

In a certain quarter of a great inland city, 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 87 

where the din of traffic stuns the ear, and where 
the pall of smoke hangs heavily, stands a de- 
spondent-looking, red brick structure which, 
thirty years ago, was a wealthy church in a fash- 
ionable residence district. Its pastors were men 
distinguished for learning and culture. On Sun- 
days a line of family carriages stood for blocks in 
either direction from its doors. But the city 
grew rapidly. Factories and railroads invaded 
the district; smoke fouled the air; street cars 
rumbled past, and their noise drowned the voice 
of the pastor in his pulpit. The wealthiest mem- 
bers began to move away into regions uninvaded 
by smoky chimneys and steel rails. Some re- 
tained their membership and contributed to the 
support of the church, for a while, but attended 
irregularly, if at all. Efforts were made to hold 
the congregation by frequent change of pastors, 
and the best talent in the country was brought 
even from distant cities, the purpose being to re- 
tain the cultured and wealthy classes that were 
slipping away. No especial attention was paid 
to the strangers who were pouring in to fill the 
vacant places. These were for the most part 
foreigners who came as factory operatives. 
They showed no interest in the church, and so 
there came to be a great gulf fixed. 

This church may be taken as a fair example of 
what is being repeated in various quarters in 
every great city in the land. Such churches have 
two courses open to them — to sell their property 
and surrender the field, or to adjust themselves to 



88 The Burden of the City 

an environment to which they are not fitted 
either by organization or experience. Seventeen 
churches in New York City a few years ago ac- 
cepted the former alternative and moved out of a 
district into which two hundred thousand people 
were moving during the same time. 

WHAT NEXT? 

Two thoughts from the Guide Book are 
needed by the church at this crisis. Paul wrote 
to the church early in its history, "Ye are the 
body of Christ." What Christ could not do were 
He on earth His church has no right to do— can- 
not do without parting company with the Master. 
Who can doubt that were He walking the streets 
of the cities to-day His pitiful heart would draw 
Him where the need was the greatest? 

The other was spoken by the Lord Himself to 
His disciples when they would have sent away 
the hungry multitude to supply their needs else- 
where, "No need have they to go away; give 
ye them to eat." Theirs was a very common 
and human need, but He thought it worth while 
to summon divine power to aid the disciples in 
meeting it. And He healed sick bodies, un- 
stopped deaf ears, and opened blind eyes just as 
readily — just as divinely, if one may so use the 
word — as He broke to hungry souls the bread of 
life or strove to restore spiritual vision to them 
that sat in darkness. Who can doubt that to- 
day, as then, He would say of these perishing 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 89 

multitudes, "No need have they to go away; 
give ye them to eat." 

So (irmly had the idea taken possession of the 
Church that its only mission in the world was to 
save the souls of men, that when, in answer to 
the appeal of the modern city it began to minis- 
ter to other than spiritual needs, the work was 
done deprecatingly and with apologies. "A 
hungry man does not take kindly to sermons," it 
said, so soup must be given first, but only to pre- 
pare the way and to beguile him into listening to 
the sermon. Without the sermon the soup was 
supposed to have no moral efficacy whatever. 

But a saner view recognizes the "saving grace 
of all good things." It sees in whatever tends to 
produce a more healthful body, a purer home, a 
keener brain, or a more skillful hand, not merely 
a trap to catch the unwary sinner, but a force 
that makes for righteousness; and if all is done 
in the name of the Lord Jesus, it becomes really, 
though indirectly, an evangelizing agency. It 
may take up lines of work that are good and 
necessary in themselves with no apology for the 
circumstance that they are not, according to the 
old standard, "religious." It will not divide life 
into "sacred" and " secular," but will consider 
all sacred when done for the love of Christ and 
in His Name. The Church may do all that the 
social settlement does, but will not fail to claim 
all good as rightly belonging to the kingdom, and 
use it to the glory of the King. 

The spiritual quality of the work will depend 



9<D The Burden of the City 

upon the workers. They should be the best the 
Church can produce, men and women who work 
not for salary nor for recognition, but who are 
possessed with a genuine love for souls, and who 
believe with might, mind and strength that 
"Thy kingdom come " is not only a possibility 
to be prayed for but a reality to be worked for. 
Such are by no means impossible. Those who 
have spent many years among the dead-in-ear- 
nest down-town toilers know that they are not 
even so rare as many imagine. Experience, 
training and versatility count for even more in 
these problem districts than elsewhere. The 
worker must not only be good, but be good for 
something. Indeed, to be useful in institutional 
work one must be able to do at least half a dozen 
things, and do them well. The successful club 
leader, besides understanding child nature, ge- 
nerically and specifically, should understand par- 
liamentary law, athletics, natural history and the 
various lines of manual training and industrial 
work, and if after a week of fun and frolic he 
can sit among his boys Sunday evening, and lead 
in prayer with unction and fervor, he will at 
least give the impression that religion belongs 
among the good and pleasant things of life, 
which, with the average boy, is decidedly a step 
in advance. 

Given an efficient and devoted corps of work- 
ers, the next needful thing is to know the people. 
We may learn something from our critics just 
here. When a settlement has been five years in 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 91 

a given locality it can give more information 
about the people, their habits, their occupations, 
their amusements, their incomes, their homes, 
and their children than the average church can 
after twenty years. It knows how many open 
garbage boxes there are in the alleys, how much 
carbon dioxide there is in the air they breathe, 
and how much chalk in the milk. This is be- 
cause the settlement studies conditions as conscien- 
tiously as the Church studies its doctrines. Both 
kinds of knowledge are needful. The medical 
student does not consider anatomy and physi- 
ology and the work at the dissecting table less 
important than the study of the pharmacopoeia. 
It is an omen of good that theological schools are 
taking up the study of the social body and its 
ailments along with their doctrines and exegeses. 

KNOWING THE FIELD 

There is but one way to become acquainted 
with the field. If the mountain will not come to 
Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain. 
The pastor of a successful institutional church 
said recently, "With our corps of workers we 
can make a thousand calls a week if necessary, 
and in case of special services we have often 
done so." This church does not fail to make its 
presence felt in the community. 

A few men and women of tact, sense and 
sympathy going about among the people will do 
more towards melting away the barriers between 
the Church and the masses than all other influ- 



92 The Burden of the City 

ences combined. A careful record should be kept 
of all families visited. Otherwise much effort 
will be simply thrown away. Especially is this 
true in canvassing. 

A systematic canvass should be made of the 
field at least once in five years. In many city 
fields the personnel of a neighborhood is essen- 
tially changed in less time than this. In a con- 
ference of workers in a congested down-town 
district, a former pastor remarked, "I am sure 
this is true, for I worked there forty years ago 
and I know all about it." "My friend/' said a 
resident worker, "if you had worked there a 
year ago you would not know much about it 
now." 

The canvass should record names, addresses, 
date of call, church affiliations and preferences, 
number of children and their approximate ages, 
and if any of these are available for Sunday- 
school, kindergarten, or any of the industrial 
classes this should be noted, together with any 
other suggestive hints, such as, "oldest daughter 
an invalid, " "son out of work," etc. 

For the canvass a blank printed form should be 
provided. A little ingenuity will make it possible 
for each church to have a form which suits its 
special needs and purposes and which can be 
kept on file without copying. This should also 
make provision for subsequent changes of ad- 
dress. It is not unusual for one family to be 
found at three or four different addresses within 
a year. 



The Modern Church unci Its Methods 93 

No work requires more good sense and tact, 
combined with a winsome personality and good 
mother wit, than house to house canvassing, and 
it is a pity that it should usually be entrusted to 
untrained workers. A humiliating recollection 
comes to mind of a certain country-bred woman 
who, on her first day's canvassing, went cheer- 
fully from front door to front door adown the 
street and at night reported the task completed. 
Afterwards when she had learned to hunt her 
quarry up-stairs and down, through mazy pas- 
sageways and alleys, around to some "rear 
tenement, fifth floor back," she realized that in 
this first effort she had probably reached scarcely 
one in twenty of those she had gone to find. 

If much relief work is undertaken by the 
church, a record of it should also be kept. Per- 
haps nothing is better for this than the card and 
envelope system used by the Bureau of Charities. 
It is not necessary to say that such records should 
be kept strictly private. Indeed, all transactions 
connected with relief work should be as private 
as possible. Nothing places a church or mission 
in a more unfortunate position than to allow it- 
self to become known as a distributing station. 
It will have plenty of for-revenue-only patrons 
who will be tempted into that most heartsicken- 
ing of all hypocrisies, the feigning of religious 
interest for the sake of what they can get. Real 
needs will come out in the friendly and intimate 
relations between the people and the visitor, and 
may be relieved in a way to save the self-respect 



94 The Burden of the City 

of the receiver and at the same time cement the 
bonds of a real friendship between them. 

Of course a church that aims to meet the peo- 
ple on the plane of their daily needs will be an 
"open church" — open all day, everyday. "If 
the church is a lighthouse, its light must be burn- 
ing every day; if it is a rescue station, its boats 
must be manned every day; if it is a school, its 
classes must be open every day; if a temple, its 
altar must be accessible every day." 

METHODS 

As church and people come into more intimate 
relations, various helpful enterprises will spring 
up of themselves, called into existence by needs 
as they are discovered and realized. If their 
growth is not rapid or sensational, and their early 
days are days of experiment and occasional 
failure, it will be a growth that will be healthful 
and permanent. Too often in our feverish haste 
to be doing something which will show results 
we begin at the wrong end of the proposition. 
Untried but enthusiastic workers drop down into 
a mission district. They believe its moral re- 
generation is to be reckoned from this epoch. 
They know little of the people, but are full of 
ideas. Somewhere a Clio Club or a Penny 
Provident Society has achieved phenomenal 
success, so a Clio Club or a Provident Society 
must be immediately begun here. Result, dis- 
appointment and an injured feeling that mission- 
ary work is not what it is represented, and added 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 95 

difficulties in the way of the next worker who 
comes with new plans. 

A girls' club that starts with a little heart-to- 
heart talk with two or three girls, and grows 
slowly as it finds out the needs and tendencies — 
not of girls in the abstract but of those particular 
girls — may not attract much attention for the first 
year or two, but it will be likely to mean far 
more to its members than the one that starts out 
with a mass meeting. The Allport Sunday Bible 
class of Rochester, N. Y., was six years growing 
from eight members to ninety-seven, but in this 
time it had " found itself," and the next four 
years saw the ninety-seven increase to eight 
hundred and seventy-two. 

Dr. Russell Conwell tells, most suggestively, 
how his reading-room came into existence in 
Grace Baptist Temple, Philadelphia: 

Our reading-room consisted of one room and one paper in 
the first place, and it is entirely a case of Christian evolution. 
Years ago it was our custom after the prayer-meeting to put 
out the gas at once and send the people home. We forgot that 
Christ's way of teaching was largely a social way. . . . 
Now we keep the whole church open as long as people wish to 
stay and carry on a Christian conversation. We had then the 
little room to which I referred with one paper in it. After- 
wards some friend brought some other papers, because people 
who did not take a Christian paper like to stop and read the 
news. From that one paper, without any plan laid or any 
great committee, but steadily adding one more and one more, 
we have gone on till now we have five different reading-rooms. 
It is just simply going on and doing the next thing. Now our 
five rooms are open all day and in the evening. Men and 



96 The Burden of the City 

women come and go as they see fit, and nearly all are ac- 
cumulating libraries for themselves. 

Much help may certainly be obtained by study- 
ing plans that have been successful in other 
places, but one plan never did fit perfectly in two 
places. Plans must be adapted, not adopted 
in toto. A wise mother was asked what her 
method had been in raising her seven sons. 
"Why, bless you!" she exclaimed, "I have had 
seven methods." The better we know the peo- 
ple, know them at home, at church and at work, 
know them personally and collectively, religiously 
and irreligiously, the less we shall weary our- 
selves trying to fit square pegs into round holes. 

HOMES AND THEIR NEEDS 

As church and people become acquainted the 
home will make its first and most painful appeal 
to the spirit of reform. From weary mother to 
neglected children, here everything seems to be 
wrong. Take this pathetic picture from *Mrs. 
Betts' "Leaven in a Great City": A party of 
wives of working men were coming back from 
an outing in Central Park, and the closed houses 
on Fifth Avenue attracted their attention. Re- 
marks were made as to the possible use to which 
such houses could be put while their owners 
were away, and one, a slight, nervous little 
woman, said: 

"I don't want anything in those houses but 
the room. I've never in my life had all the room 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 97 

I wanted." Then after a moment she continued: 
"The reason we don't love each other as we 
should is because we don't have room; we crowd 
each other. All the time I lived in my father's 
house 1 was crowded. How we used to fight! 
Fight in the night as well as in the day, just be- 
cause we did not have room. The beds were so 
crowded that one of the young ones had to 
sleep across the foot. The big ones would keep 
their feet up while they were awake, but when 
they went to sleep they would stretch out and 
kick the one across the foot. When I was so 
little that I slept that way, I used to lie awake in 
terror expecting that kick, and how I scratched 
when it came! 1 know we should have loved 
each other if we could have had room to grow 
up in, as the children in those houses do. And 
my mother! She didn't have a room to her- 
self even when she had the sickness that killed 
her. ,, 

Add to the nervous irritation from being 
"always crowded " the depressing effect of the 
lack of sunlight and air, the hopeless struggle 
with dirt — and no one who has not seen this 
can justly criticise — the pinch of limited income 
and the ever present fear that it may cease 
altogether, above all the lack of incentive that 
comes from anything better to look forward to 
than the same dull, maddening grind of the 
wheels until death opens the door to an un- 
certain future— and then try to imagine what re- 
form in such homes must mean. 



98 The Burden of the City 

If reform could but begin with the mother I 
Were she capable, clear-visioned, experienced in 
domestic economics and in child-training, condi- 
tions might be " something bettered." But were 
she all this she would not be here at all. It is a 
condition, not a theory, that confronts us. Still, 
improvement can be made if mothers will but learn 
the things that make for their present salvation. 
But we meet difficulty at the threshold. Hard 
work and constant self-renunciation have dulled 
the mother until she has lost desire for social life. 
On that side of her nature she is dormant or dead. 
It is often impossible to persuade a mother, old 
at forty, into a few days' outing in the country, 
after every obstacle has been removed save that 
one apathetic feeling that she " can't. " But given 
the desire for improvement there remains the 
lack of knowledge. The mother probably spent 
the years of her life between the ages of twelve 
or fourteen and her marriage in some shop or 
factory, and her domestic training previous to 
that was such as she is giving her own children. 
The staple article of diet in the home is the puffy, 
tasteless roll from the bakery, washed down by 
a cup of black coffee from the pot which stands 
on the back of the stove from day's end to day's 
end. When the husband works they have in addi- 
tion plenty of fried meat, soup and beer. When 
he is "out of his job," coffee or tea and rolls 
suffice. Months of plenty alternate with seasons 
of famine. Much of the irritability and viciousness 
in children and much of drunkenness in men is 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 99 

no doubt due to improper or insufficient nutrition. 
A child in a church kindergarten had been the 
despair of his teachers for his restlessness and 
perversity. When every other means had failed 
the teacher tried the plan of taking him into the 
lunch room every day and giving him a bowl of 
home-made bread and milk. The result surprised 
the teachers themselves, as gradually he became 
quiet, tractable and affectionate. Afterwards it 
transpired that the father had been out of work 
all winter, and the family had often been for days 
with little or no food. 

A citizen once purchased the contents of a 
working man's " tin dinner pail " and took them 
to the Board of Health for chemical analysis. 
The baker's bread was found to be adulterated 
with glucose and malt extract; the apple butter 
with analine red and glucose; the sausage colored 
with analine red and adulterated with about ten 
per cent, of flaked corn grits; the butter colored 
with dye-stuff; the coffee glazed with dextrine 
and starch, and colored with brown analine dye. 
This had doubtless all been purchased at the 
corner grocery with no thought of anything be- 
yond satisfying the appetite. It would be in- 
teresting to know exactly how much natural 
depravity the working man absorbed with the 
analine dye. A mother was once remonstrated 
with for buying cheap cakes for her children in- 
stead of cooking vegetables. She replied easily, 
"Oh, I'm thinkin' one thing fills 'em up as well 
as another." The time is past to scoff, or to deny 



loo The Burden of the City 

the fact that much that has been called depravity is 
semi-starvation, but the campaign of education is 
but just begun. 

To the mothers the church must bring, first of 
all, inspiration and new ideals, then education, 
then help in applying it. The church can but be 
interested in tenement house improvement, 
better sanitary laws, everything that would 
relieve the pressure of environment upon the 
lives of the poor, but side by side with the cam- 
paign for civic improvement must go the effort 
for the individual, and it is this that falls chiefly 
within the scope of missionary effort. 

FOR MOTHERS 

How can these indifferent, these ignorant, 
these discouraged mothers be stimulated, taught, 
inspired ? 

The impulse will first come from the church 
visitor. Once interested much can be accom- 
plished through the club and the mothers' meet- 
ings. 

Often, repeated invitations and beguilements 
will fail to draw the mother from the home. 
But some day, persuaded thereto by the represen- 
tations of a neighbor who has been there, she 
will come. If then there is a genial, uplifting, 
breezy atmosphere to blow away the fogs that 
have been accumulating in heart and brain she will 
come again. The essential thing is to secure and 
maintain such an atmosphere. 

In one community effort after effort to main- 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 101 

tain a mothers' meeting on usual lines had failed. 
Then the kindergartners undertook the problem. 
"What they need is a good time," they said. 
Written invitations, seconded by the children, 
prevailed to the extent of bringing out fifteen or 
twenty mothers. They sat on the little red 
chairs. They learned the children's games, and, 
after the first shyness wore away, went off into 
screams of laughter at their own and each others' 
awkwardness. It was an edifying spectacle to 
see one gray-haired grandmother gallop stiffly 
down the room in imitation of the knight on 
horseback and catching the hoops upon her 
spear return half ashamed but breathless and 
laughing to her place. The lively music was 
exhilarating and for an hour they played with 
the delight of children. Then there was a little 
informal talk by the leader as to the purpose 
of the games in teaching the children habits of 
honor and courtesy. A dish of ice cream and a 
bit of cake finished the entertainment. If noth- 
ing else had been gained, there was a shaking off 
of depressing care and a desire to come again. 
After a number of meetings of this kind with 
little in view beyond a " good time," the women 
themselves began to inquire concerning an organi- 
zation. A committee was appointed to draw up 
a constitution, plans were laid for helpful pro- 
grams and the club was on its upward way. Its 
future success lies in the tact, spirit and enter- 
prise of the leaders into whose hands it falls. 
One leader believes that the "roll call "has 



102 The Burden of the City 

been a great help in securing attendance at her 
mothers' meetings. This leader, a woman of 
exceptionally sunny temperament, took charge 
of a mothers' meeting which consisted of a 
rapidly decreasing remnant of five or six melan- 
choly women who sat in a row and listened to a 
lecture on a prepared topic. The new leader 
banished stiffness by placing the chairs about an 
open fireplace, and for the first two or three 
meetings attempted little beyond a free and 
chatty interchange of views. At present she has 
an enrollment of over a hundred members, de- 
voted to the club and the leader. Her method of 
" calling the roll" is unique but effective. 

"Mrs. Billinski." "Present." "Mrs. Otto." 
"Present." "Mrs. Schlicker." No response. 
"Does anybody know why Mrs. Schlicker is not 
with us to-day?" asks the leader briskly. "I 
stopped for her, but she had her face all tied up 
with toothache," volunteers some one. "Oh, 
too bad ! I have some splendid toothache 
medicine. Won't you stop and take her some 
after the meeting?" "Mrs. Browning." "There's 
a new baby at Mrs. Browning's," explains some 
one, and a sympathetic smile goes round. The 
leader appoints on the spot a committee to 
visit the new mother and present the con- 
gratulations of the club. "Mrs. Bartunik." 
"She's moved ; she can't come no more." And 
so on through the list. Cheery and uncon- 
ventional, but when it is done every woman 
feels that it is a matter of friendly concern to 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 103 

every one whether she is in her place or not. 
The spirit of comradeship and good cheer, such 
a marked feature in this club, is largely the reflec- 
tion of the spirit of the leader. 

One woman's club, following the suggestion of 
the home department of the Sunday-school, has 
a list of shut-in members to whom visitors go 
from the club with reports of the meeting and a 
little remembrance in the shape of a bunch of 
flowers, a bit of fruit, or some other delicacy. 

In another church the young girls' class in 
kitchen garden and elementary cooking, serves 
refreshments at the mothers' meeting once a 
month. The plates are wooden, the napkins 
paper, and the viands are simple, but the girls 
wear the smartest of white caps and aprons, and 
the serving is done in irreproachable style. The 
new relation that permits the mother to sit still 
and be waited upon by the daughter, instead of 
being the never-resting household drudge, gives 
a wholesome touch of filial duty. 

The "Helping Hand" is but a branch of a 
great Los Angeles Woman's League, but it sug- 
gests a plan which is worked out with various 
modifications in many mothers' meetings. The 
poorer women come one afternoon in a week, 
and after brief devotions they begin sewing. As 
they sew a talk is given on some practical sub- 
ject. There are instructors to assist those who 
do not understand sewing, and to help the work. 
Mothers are allowed ten cents an hour or twenty- 
five cents an afternoon, and are paid in the gar- 



104 The Burden of the City 

ments which they have made or repaired. Ma- 
terials are bought at wholesale, and the women 
choose such garment as they need for their after- 
noon lesson. This combines instruction with 
benevolence in a very friendly and practical way. 
The plan of a sewing afternoon can be modified 
so as to make its purpose to help others. Even 
poor women are glad to be able to do something 
for those worse off than themselves, and are 
wonderfully helped and developed by so doing. 

In this as in all philanthropic work the motto 
should be graven on the hearts of the leaders and 
directors, "Not for, but with the people." It 
may be hard for the leader to hold in check her 
own high plans for the " elevation of the masses/* 
But final results will be better to let the work go 
on for months in channels that seem to her not 
the best, if at length in response to her quiet, 
tactful leadership the impulse towards improve- 
ment shall seem to come from the mothers. 
They will not be helped by what is done for 
them one hundredth part as much as by what 
they do for themselves. One must be patient 
with crude efforts, suggest, inspire, help, but 
leave responsibility with the people whenever 
possible. 

THE DEMANDS OF YOUNG PEOPLE 

Young people do not suffer so much from dull- 
ness, though the work of factory and shop is 
monotonous in its ceaseless repetition of some 
simple mechanical effort, but once the day's work 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 105 

is done a craving for excitement and recreation is 
the natural reaction from hours of confinement. 
The child of the city streets has no resources 
within himself. The girls are unskilled with the 
needle, the boys with tools. They have no taste 
for reading, and if they had, close proximity to 
babies and soap suds is not conducive to literary 
pursuits. They cannot receive company in their 
homes, and are too restless to remain long in- 
doors. The street with its good fellowship waits 
for them. They are used to living, eating, sleep- 
ing and working in crowds and are as undis- 
turbed by the public gaze as more favored per- 
sons in the privacy of home. There is no lack 
of cheap amusement. Theatres, dance halls, 
dime museums, beer gardens, summer excur- 
sions, bowling alleys, ball games — what has the 
Church to offer in competition with these ? 

With the broadening of the sphere of church 
activity there is certainly room to provide for the 
young, through societies and clubs, such recre- 
ation as they need, harmless in itself, and so 
planned as to bring them in contact with a higher 
standard of life, and to offer opportunities for its 
attainment. 

Working girls' clubs are better small than large, 
that the leader may be lavish of personal influ- 
ence. Whether the interest that holds it together 
be literature or athletics, cooking or lace-making, 
the real agency of helpfulness will be the per- 
sonality of the woman in charge. If she have 
the sympathy and tact to win the confidence of 



106 The Burden of the City 

her girls, she may become to them the dear ideal 
of gracious womanhood, weaving into the fabric 
of their lives many a golden thread of womanly 
purpose. 

For the social evil, with its castaways, the 
Church does its best work through its missions, 
homes, and refuges whose especial business it is 
to deal with these classes. But in the way of 
prevention — infinitely better than cure — the 
churches have unlimited scope. In the mere 
matter of providing pure amusement they are 
fighting vice on its own ground. Stelzle says, 
" When you have opened one door to any inno- 
cent, healthy pleasure you have closed a dozen 
avenues to sin and shame/' 

The Committee of Fifteen, appointed in New 
York City for the investigation of the social evil, 
laid great stress in their report upon the need of 
better opportunities for social intercourse and 
amusement among the working classes. The 
fascinations of the " Raines Law Hotels " lay in 
the opportunities they afforded for unrestrained 
social life with all the sparkle of lights, music 
and gayety. Their infamy lay in the fact that 
they were the open doorways to the saloon and 
the brothel. 

" My boy loved music so; it was that led him 
straight to ruin ! " wailed one heart-broken mother. 
But love for music and all pure and beautiful 
things must have been given by the Creator to 
lure us to heaven. Why should we permit the 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 107 

emissaries of evil to monopolize good and holy 
things for unholy uses ? 

Side by side with the social evil among the 
foes of the home stands the saloon, and the insti- 
tutional church which is not an active temperance 
force will sadly fail of its mission. Saloons are 
massed in the down-town district, and between 
them and the homes the children go merrily with 
their foaming pails. Aside from influencing leg- 
islation the Church may fight this evil by educa- 
tion and substitution, and, like the saloon forces, 
the temperance workers must "keep everlast- 
ingly at it." Mothers can be reached on this sub- 
ject through lessons on cooking, domestic econ- 
omy, and child-training. Children must be 
taught in clubs and anti-cigarette leagues, and in 
Sunday-school — everywhere — that beer is not a 
food; that it degrades and brutalizes even when 
not taken in sufficient quantities to intoxicate; 
and that it inevitably prepares the way for 
stronger liquors. But the most vigorous cam- 
paign of education will fail unless temperance 
drinks and saloon privileges are put within as 
easy reach of the working man as intoxicating 
beverages now are. Just how or by what in- 
fluence this may best be brought about is still 
an open question. The church or temperance 
restaurant has its advocates. Charles Stelzle who 
writes ably of "The Working Man and Social 
Problems," thinks these will not win the favor 
of working men as " they smack too much of pa- 
ternalism or patronage." It would seem possible 



] 08 The Burden of the City 

to eliminate this objection while retaining the 
principle. Some such restaurants have been at 
least moderately successful. "When doctors 
disagree" the "how" must be left among the 
problems which farther experience will decide. 

But the campaign of education cannot be 
pushed too vigorously. Among devices for 
bringing this question before the people who 
most need it, nothing has superseded the Temper- 
ance Medal Contests so popular a few years ago. 
They will seldom fail to draw an audience quite 
outside the usual church attendants. Fathers 
who drink and fathers who sell liquor will come 
to the church and listen proudly to Tommie's or 
Jennie's temperance oration, and incidentally to 
stirring music and other exercises, who would 
decline to listen to similar sentiments under any 
other circumstances whatsoever. 

What the Church would give to the future of 
temperance manhood and womanhood it must 
hide in the heart of the child to-day. 

Side by side with the spirit of loyalty to the 
club or society there should be steadily cultivated 
the spirit of helpfulness. The club that seeketh 
its own life alone shall lose it, should be the 
principle instilled from the beginning. The 
mothers' club, be the members ever so poor, can 
remember the sick or the infirm, or those poorer 
than themselves, with helpful kindnesses. The 
young men's athletic club can furnish an even- 
ing's entertainment for their elders; the cooking 
class can surprise their brothers with a " spread " ; 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 109 

the children's clubs can invite their mothers to 
an exhibit where their best wares and best man- 
ners are at the service of their guests; even the 
smallest children can find some way by which 
they can make an occasional happy afternoon or 
evening for parents or friends. 

SPECIAL HELPS 

The destruction of the poor is their poverty— 
likewise their ignorance. Such suffer untold 
wrongs at the hands of unscrupulous business 
enterprises, that, under the guise of legal forms, 
violate every law of morals and justice. Loans 
at ruinous rates of interest, various forms of in- 
surance policies, the contract labor system, sell- 
ing on the installment plan, and numberless other 
schemes wring from the poor and helpless the 
pitiful stipend that is justly theirs. A woman 
was paying $2.50 a month interest on a loan of 
fifteen dollars, in default of which all her furni- 
ture was liable to be seized. Asked why she had 
signed such a bond she replied, " What could I 
do ? We had had scarcely a crust of bread for 
three days. My baby cried for hunger, and when 
I put him to my breast he drew blood; there was 
no milk there. Could I see my children starve ?" 
In other cases persons in similar extremity have 
signed mortgages calling for 250 and even 300 
per cent, interest. Of course a crisis comes 
sooner or later. The furniture may be seized, 
and the family broken up. The husband, if he 
is living, has doubtless deserted before this; the 



no The Burden of the City 

children are sent temporarily to institutions and 
the heart-broken mother goes to work alone, 
hoping in time to gather her household goods 
around her again. 

In most large cities a Bureau of Justice is 
established for the protection of the poor, but 
naturally those who need to avail themselves of 
it know nothing of its existence. Help must 
come from some nearer and more interested 
source. If half a dozen responsible lawyers 
would volunteer to give an hour occasionally, 
say once a week, to hearing complaints, giving 
consultation and advice free, their business cards 
and telephone call in an envelope in the care of 
some judicious man or woman connected with 
the church, would constitute a very good supple- 
mentary "Bureau of Justice." Matters requiring 
special or difficult service could be taken to the 
higher court. 

Penny Saving Societies are invaluable for 
teaching habits of thrift in which, truth to tell, 
the poor are often sadly deficient. Pennies slip 
through the dirty hands of the street waif with 
astonishing rapidity on their way to the slot 
machine or the seductive candy shop. The 
hungrier the child the more hurried the transit. 
Many settlements and public schools have incor- 
porated these societies into their work, but 
where no other institution provides for the need 
the church may wisely do so. 

A kindergarten the church must surely have 
unless, as is seldom the case, the public school 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 1 1 1 

makes adequate provision for all children of 
kindergarten age. A day nursery where work- 
ing mothers may leave their babies for the day, 
is a need to be provided for in some way. 
Kitchen-garden, basketry, sewing schools, sloyd, 
and other forms of manual training carry the 
smallest tots up to the dignity of club life. The 
messenger boy service in the Sunday-school 
gives duties and dignity to the growing boy, just 
at the age when he is likely to be the despair of 
both Church and state. The children's choir under 
competent leadership may claim from fifty to 
two hundred children, and hundreds more will 
come to hear them sing. If vestments are used 
the effect is all the more impressive and the 
poorest children need not be kept out, since the 
gown covers a multitude of deficiencies in the 
matter of apparel. The Pleasant Sunday After- 
noon Club will make a strong bid for the work- 
ing man; a Mutual Benefit Club, making possible 
small loans at a low rate of interest, will tide 
many a family over a hard place and save miser- 
able complications with loan sharks. 

Secularizing the work of the Church ? The 
writer remembers well a visit to one such church 
— its big soul-stirring audiences, its glowing 
sermons, its old-fashioned class meetings — five 
or six going on at once in as many different 
rooms — the fire and fervor of the prayer-meet- 
ings. There were other things to be sure, things 
which our exclusively spiritual brethren deprecate 
as "running to sociology, civics, literature and 



1 1 2 The Burden of the City 

song"; but they ministered to legitimate needs 
in a wholesome way. A telling fact was that 
the membership of this church had increased in 
three years from sixty to more than a thousand 
souls. 

Speaking enthusiastically of this church, how- 
ever, to a metropolitan friend, a pained expres- 
sion stole over her face, and she replied rather 
stiffly, "Our pastor does not approve of their 
methods. Do come and visit our church; it is 
said to be the most spiritual church in the city." 
The following Sabbath I visited "our church," 
similarly situated. The sermon and the service 
were irreproachable, but echoed drearily over 
empty pews. After the sermon a score of white 
haired saints remained to tell with shining eyes 
of what God had done for their souls; but ah, 
the unhearing multitudes! Spiritual it might 
have been, but all too ascetic to satisfy the 
humanity-loving Christ. 

The cost of carrying on the down-town church 
is the real problem, since both money and 
workers must come chiefly from outside. These 
churches seldom become self-supporting, owing 
to the constant shifting of the population. As 
soon as a family acquires tastes and ambitions 
for better things than the neighborhood affords, 
it moves out. The Church is constantly losing 
the best and taking in raw material. But outside 
churches profit by this. In a certain city four 
churches in the middle belt recognize the fact 
that their membership is drawn chiefly from one 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 113 

down-town mission church. Yet this church can 
scarcely bring its membership over the one hun- 
dred mark. It is practically a feeder, not only 
for these four, but for a number of other 
churches. Its teachers and helpers come from 
all parts of the city. Its existence is a constant 
struggle by the aid of volunteer workers to make 
five thousand dollars do the work of fifty thou- 
sand. This struggle will not end until the 
suburban and other churches realize what is 
meant by the words, "Ye are the Body of 
Christ." Not churches, but The Church — each a 
part of the whole — constituting together the 
Body of Christ. The suburban church can no 
more fulfill its mission without the down-town 
church than the down-town church without the 
other — no more than the head can perform its 
work without the heart. Can the hand deck 
itself with jewels while the feet are clothed in 
rags, and the whole body be not shamed ? 

" NO MAN—TO HIMSELF ALONE " 

From the standpoint of mere worldly honor 
the suburbanite may not shirk responsibility 
for the " submerged masses." The well-to-do 
citizen betakes himself to the suburbs to escape 
the dust and smoke and noise of the city, but he 
still retains his business relations there. His wife 
goes to the city for her shopping and he to his 
office. He is content to glean his wealth from 
the city's heart; does he owe nothing to the 
sweating, low-browed toilers that he leaves be- 



1 14 The Burden of the City 

hind when he takes the " five o'clock suburban" 
for his pretty cottage with its green lawns and 
embowering shade trees ? 

Even the far-away country home has an in- 
terest in these storm centres of civilization. In 
helping the struggling city mission it may help 
to save itself. When every country town and 
hamlet is pouring its sturdy young life into the 
great mills of the city it matters much what are 
the forces making for righteousness where these 
mills turn out their grist of human lives. When 
Tom and Mabel go, as they some time will, to 
seek their fortunes in the city, it matters much if 
the Christ shall meet them there. They will 
realize little of His presence in business — more 
to-day than yesterday, thank God — but He may 
meet and greet them on the street in the person 
of His missionaries. They may find Him where 
some church or mission opens wide its hospi- 
table doors day and night to burdened and home- 
sick hearts. They have left the wide-spreading 
eaves of home for one little stuffy room; father, 
mother and friend for a sea of stranger faces; the 
village church and its social life for the city 
street. The emissaries of evil watch for them 
on every corner. Windows sparkle, music 
tinkles, painted faces smile, theatres flaunt their 
attractions, friendly voices invite them to haunts 
of pleasure. If the churches offer but a formal 
greeting, if they find within them barren walls 
and chilling atmosphere with gruesome warn- 
ings, while their eager young blood clamors for 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 1 15 

fellowship and good cheer, can the Church hope 
to win and hold them ? 

The collection for city missions, the barrel 
of fruit or clothing, even the box of flowers sent 
from some country town into the city wilder- 
ness, may be a loaf cast upon the waters that 
shall some time help to save the barefoot child 
now trudging on his way to school along shaded 
country roads. 

BIBLE LESSON 
The Ministering Church 

The Ministry of Loving Interest. (Heb. 13:1-3; Gal. 
6:2; Rom 12 : 15, 16.) 

The Ministry of the Word. (Acts 20:28; 1 Tim. 4:16; 
1 Peter 5 : 2 ; I Thess. 5 : 14, 15.) 

Faithful Ministry Rewarded. (Acts 2 : 47 ; Matt. 25 : 35-40 ; 
James 2 : 5.) 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

1. Describe four types of city churches, and give examples 
from your own observation. 

2. Describe the evolution of the down-town mission church. 
What are its alternatives ? 

3. What messages from the inspired Word direct the course 
to pursue ? 

4. What justification has a church for adopting other lines 
of activity than the devotional services ? 

5. Where lies the distinction between " sacred " and "sec- 
ular " enterprises ? 

6. What may the church profitably learn from settlement 
methods ? 



Il6 The Burden of the City 

7. What is a house-to-house canvass expected to accom- 
plish ? 

8. How should relief work be carried on as regards pub- 
licity ? 

9. Describe some conditions in tenement homes that make 
moral reform difficult. 

10. What aid should the church bring to the mother in such 
homes ? 

11. What means may it employ to accomplish these ends? 

12. What harm may result from always doing for people? 
Name better ways. 

13. In what ways may even the poorest people be helpful 
to others ? 

14. How may the church meet the needs of the young peo- 
ple of the neighborhood ? 

15. In what sense are amusements and recreations moral 
agencies ? 

16. Name other helpful enterprises carried on by institu- 
tional churches. 

17. How are suburban and country churches interested in 
the problems of the " down- town church " ? 

COLLATERAL READING 

The Workingman and Social Problems, Charles Stelzle. 
Revell. 75 cents net. 

Modern Methods of Church Work, George W. Mead. Dodd, 
Mead & Co. $1.50. 

The Christian Pastor and the Working Church, Washington 
Gladden. Scribner. $2.50 net. 

A Preacher's Story of his Work, W. S. Rainsford. Mac- 
millan. $1.25 net. 

Down in Water Street, S. H. Hadley. Revell. #1.00 net. 

Chapter on The Church and the People, from The City 
Wilderness. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. #1.50. 



The Modern Church and Its Methods 117 

Chapters X, XI, XII, from The New Era, Dr. Josiah Strong. 
Baker & Taylor Co. 75 cents (paper 35 cents.) 

The Boy Problem in the Church, Chapter VI, William B. 
Forbush. Pilgrim Tress. 75 cents net. 

The Church, Chapter X, in Friendly Visiting Among the 
Poor, Mary E. Richmond. Macmillan. #1.00. 

The Institutional Church, Dr. Edward Judson. Wessels & Co. 
60 cents net. 

The Bible School, A. H. McKinney, Ph.D. Wessels & Co. 
60 cents net. 



THE DEACONESS IN CITY 
MISSIONS 



THE BURDEN 

" O God," I cried, " why may I not forget ? 
These halt and hurt in life's hard battle 

Throng me yet. 
Am I their keeper ? Only I — to bear 
This constant burden of their grief and care ? 
Why must I suffer for the others' sin ? 
Would that my eyes had never opened been ! " 
And the thorn-crowned and Patient One 
Replied, " They thronged Me too ; I too have seen." 

" Thy other children go at will," I said, 

Protesting still. 
" They go, unheeding. But these sick and sad, 
These blind and orphan, yea, and those that sin 
Drag at my heart. For them I serve and groan. 

Why is it ? Let me rest, Lord. I have tried " 

He turned and looked at me ; " But I have died." 

" But, Lord, this ceaseless travail of my soul ! 
This stress ! This often fruitless toil 

These souls to win ! 
They are not mine. I brought not forth this host 
Of needy creatures, struggling, tempest-tossed — 
They are not mine." 
He looked at them — the look of one divine ! 
He turned and looked at me ; " But they are Mine." 

" O God," I said, " I understand at last. 
Forgive ! and henceforth I will bond-slave be 
To Thy least, weakest, vilest ones, 

I would not more be free." 
He smiled, and said, " // is to Me." 

— Lucy Rider Meyer. 



IV 
THE DEACONESS IN CITY MISSIONS 

A WOMAN with a travelling bag in her 
hand stood on a street corner in Chicago, 
looking about her doubtfully. She wore 
a plain black dress with white collar and cuffs, a 
small, plain, black bonnet with white ties knotted 
in a broad bow under her chin. A ragged street 
gamin stopped, looked at her, and said respect- 
fully, " Wanter find the Deac'ness Home, ma'am ? 
Go right down the avenue to the next street and 
there 'tis." 

A few months later the same woman paused 
to get her bearings on a crowded street corner in 
New York City, when a handsomely dressed 
matron accosted her: "I beg your pardon, but 
can I be of any assistance in directing you?" 
Then, in answer to the woman's involuntary look 
of surprise, she added, "You are one of our 
deaconesses, are you not ? " The inference is 
plain — the deaconess is becoming well-known to 
widely varying classes of city dwellers. 

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE WORK 

The history of the deaconess movement is both 
ancient and honorable. Since Paul commended 
to the church of Rome, " Phoebe, our sister," the 

121 



122 The Burden of the City 

deaconess idea has never become quite extinct. 
Following the fortunes of the early Christian 
church, with its sacrifices and heroisms, it was 
superseded during the dark ages by the spirit of 
asceticism fostered by the papal hierarchy, and 
the free deaconess became the cloistered nun. 
But the demands of modern times, and especially 
the call of the modern city, have brought the 
deaconess again into prominence. The famous 
Broadhead Chapel, of Bristol, England, had dea- 
conesses over two hundred years ago. It was 
from the Mennonite Brethren in Holland that 
Pastor Fliedner received the idea that developed 
into the great institutions that have sent fourteen 
thousand of the faithful and devoted Kaiserswerth 
deaconesses through Europe, northern Africa and 
Palestine. 

The Church of England and the Wesleyan 
Church have long employed deaconesses in Eng- 
land, and for more than fifty years the costumes 
of Lutheran and Episcopalian deaconesses — sym- 
bols of blessed service — have been seen in our 
American cities. In 1895 a Lutheran pastor said 
in an address before a convention of Methodist 
deaconesses and workers, "A few years ago, 
when I heard of the beginnings of deaconess 
work in the Methodist church, I said, 'Why, 
those people are taking our tools. I wonder if 
they will know how to use them/ We have 
been answered in the result. Within five years 
your deaconesses have increased from fifty to five 
hundred, and we are still agitating." 



The Deaconess in City Missions 123 

AMONG THE CHURCHES 

The Methodist Episcopal Church has the honor 
— and consequent responsibility — of having un- 
der its care the most extensive deaconess work in 
this country. The official recognition and en- 
dorsement of the governing body of the church — 
the General Conference — in 1888, made deaconess 
work a recognized factor of Methodist church 
polity. Its training schools are sending out 
scores of new workers yearly — a supply, how- 
ever, that never equals the demand — and its 
Deaconess Homes, orphanages, schools and hos- 
pitals are havens of shelter and help. 

It was in October, 1887, that the first Deaconess 
Home in American Methodism took local habita- 
tion and a name. 1 One of its occupants writes, 
1 'We began housekeeping on a small scale in a 
little flat. The whole visible prospect for the 
'Home' consisted of a stove, a bed, a lounge, 
four chairs and a lamp, a month's rent and our 
two selves. But we bade our anxious fears sub- 
side, prayed much and went forward." 

The Methodist Episcopal Church South did not 
attempt definite city work as early as did that of 

1 The honor of practically beginning the deaconess work in 
connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United 
States belongs to Mrs. Lucy Rider Meyer, of the Chicago Train- 
ing School, who, during the summer months of 1887, aided by 
eight earnest Christian women, worked among the poor, the 
sick and the needy of that great city without any reward of 
man's giving. The story of the growth of the work, the se- 
curing of a permanent home, and the enlargement of its re- 
sources is a most interesting one. — Mrs. Jane Bancroft Robin- 
son in " Deaconesses in Europe and their Lessons for America." 



124 The Burden of the City 

the North, other and more pressing conditions 
demanding its attention. But with the coming 
in of the new century the growing population 
and influence of the cities, and especially the 
rapid increase of factories in the South, have 
given warning of an impending crisis. The 
alarm has been sounded, and church and mis- 
sionary societies are preparing for a vigorous 
campaign, determined that the city peril shall not 
become in the South what it is in the northern 
and middle states. The need of trained workers 
is apparent, and in 1902 the General Conference 
of the Church South created the office of dea- 
coness, and the Woman's Home Mission Society 
enlarged its constitution to include the new form 
of work. A well-established training-school for 
Christian workers had already prepared some 
women for the office, and its work continues. 
Deaconess Homes are being opened as fast as 
competent workers can be placed in the field. 

Churches of other denominations have mani- 
fested warm interest in the deaconess movement, 
and have often given it generous assistance. Dr. 
S. L. Morris, in a work on Presbyterian missions 
in the South and West, says, 

''Let the ancient order of deaconesses be re- 
vived in our church in the class of devoted 
women who are willing to surrender everything 
else for the service of Christ, in Bible readings, 
in homes of the poor, distributing alms and nurs- 
ing the sick — helpers like those commended by 
Paul as 'laboring with him in the gospel.'" 



The Deaconess in City Missions 125 

During the excitement of a great coal strike, a 
deaconess nurse lived in the homes of the miners, 
nursing the sick, bringing to the starving ones 
food that she solicited from the rich, and reliev- 
ing suffering in every possible way. She won 
the confidence of both sides, and on one occa- 
sion, at least, prevented bloodshed by giving 
warning of an intended outbreak. She shared 
the life of the people in this way for months, 
living on the black bread, coffee and beans that 
formed the staple diet of the miners. 

The Congregational Church of the town, at- 
tracted by her heroic work, gave much assistance 
and finally assumed the entire responsibility, and 
a prosperous mission work is now growing up 
through the efforts of this real ''sister of the 
people." 

In 1901 a committee appointed by the Illinois 
State Association of Congregational churches 
heartily endorsed the deaconess movement and, 
following a recommendation of the report, a 
training-school has been established in Chi- 
cago. 

Even earlier than this, the Baptist Church, 
which claims to have employed deaconesses from 
time to time during its entire history, found a 
providential opening for them in the institutional 
work of Amity Church, in New York City. A 
Christian Union for deaconess work was organ- 
ized in 1894, and the denomination now has 
several ordained deaconesses and a number of 
probationers. The accepted costume of both 



126 The Burden of the City 

Baptist and Congregational deaconesses is dark 
blue with white collar and cuffs. 

From the first the development of deaconess 
work has been along providential lines, each new 
department being called into existence by a defi- 
nite need. The workers have " prayed much and 
gone forward." The scope for deaconess work 
is so broad as to offer practically no restriction to 
the Christian woman willing to devote her one 
talent or her ten talents to the cause of humanity 
under the direction of the church. " To minister 
to the poor, care for the sick, provide for the or- 
phan, comfort the sorrowing, seek the wander- 
ing, save the sinning, and, relinquishing all other 
pursuits, devote herself to these and other forms 
of Christian labor" — what broader field could 
Christian philanthropy ask ? 

"WHAT IS A DEACONESS?" 

The question is still asked, "In what respects 
does the deaconess differ from other missionary 
workers ? " Certainly the differences in no way 
touch moral character. But the city missionary, 
the equal of the deaconess in goodness, in self- 
sacrifice, in devotion to her work, may or may 
not have had special training for it. The dea- 
coness must have passed a definite time in the 
special study and practice of her profession be- 
fore she receives her license. The missionary is 
not costumed. The deaconess wears a specified 
garb for identification and protection. The mis- 
sionary receives a salary based upon the value of 



The Deaconess in City Missions 127 

her work. Deaconesses receive support and a 
small monthly allowance for clothing and per- 
sonal expenses, with the assurance that they will 
be cared for if broken down or superannuated in 
the service. The chief advantage of the un- 
salaried plan is that the allowance does not vary 
with the field or with the responsibilities as- 
sumed, so that all temptation to choose one's 
field of labor for financial reasons is removed. 
The deaconess, moreover, is a recognized officer 
of the church, specially set apart and consecrated 
for her work. Trained and tested for general 
work she can and should have specific prepa- 
ration for the special phase of that work to 
which her consecrated energies are to be directed 
— as nurse or visitor, a leader in kindergarten 
or other institutional work, in charge of a day 
nursery, a rescue home or an orphanage, as a 
" Travellers' Aid," an evangelist, or a teacher. 
The need for workers in departments like these 
exists in almost every city in our land, and must 
be supplied by the churches as soon as possible. 
And from what source can that supply so well be 
drawn as from the ranks of women officially set 
apart and trained for such service ? 

If the deaconess is to fulfill her mission to the 
sick she must have training. There must be 
hospitals for this, and also for the sick poor who 
can rarely be properly cared for in their dark, 
crowded, unsanitary homes. In answer to this 
double need, deaconess hospitals have been es- 
tablished. Perhaps no work appeals more directly 



128 The Burden of the City 

to suffering humanity than that of the nurse 
deaconess. Certainly none demands stronger 
fibre, both physically and spiritually. It is im- 
possible to supply the demand for capable, in- 
telligent, consecrated women who are willing 
and able to perform this duty. Numerous hos- 
pitals have been proffered to those in charge of 
deaconess work, and refused because of the im- 
possibility of securing enough deaconesses to 
"man " them. 

The deaconess nurse goes preferably into the 
homes of the poor, bringing the skilled touch of 
the nurse and the loving heart of Christian 
womanhood to the service of the neediest. 
Contagion has no terrors for her. Fever or 
diphtheria is welcomed as a foeman worthy of her 
steel. Filth, vermin, and dangerously unsanitary 
conditions are matters of every-day occurrence. 
No service so quickly opens the heart to good in- 
fluences as this which comes in hours of deepest 
need and helplessness, to lead the heart through 
human tenderness to the source of all goodness 
and love. Whole families have been won to 
Christ through the services of a Christian nurse. 

The deaconess who works for a church, or a 
mission, to which she has been assigned, is not 
there to carry on, single-handed, the charitable or 
evangelistic work of the church. A wise woman 
in this capacity may do much to bring the ex- 
tremes of social conditions into personal and 
sympathetic relations. Not less but more interest 
in the poor, and greater effort in their behalf, 



The Dcuconess in City Missions 129 

should result from the presence of the deaconess. 
When pastor and people have done their share 
there will still be enough left to tax all her re- 
sources. As she starts on her round of calls she 
never knows what emergencies may meet her 
half-way. It may be a mother distracted over a 
wayward child, or a destitute family about to be 
turned into the street for non-payment of rent; 
it may be sorrow or death in the home of rich or 
poor; it may be domestic trouble that must be 
hid from friends and neighbors, but may be 
poured into the ears of this bearer of other men's 
burdens. Whatever the emergency, the dea- 
coness must bring to it all her resources of heart 
and mind, and the help of the Divine Comforter. 
" You put me on God," said a poor, unlettered 
woman to the patient visitor. " When you are 
long gone, I don't seem to think much about 'im, 
an' then you comes an' talks to me till it seems 
like e's right here." 

The deaconess rightfully looks to the church 
and its members for the necessary facilities for 
carrying on her work. She must often devise 
and develop new lines of helpful work. Teach- 
ers for her industrial school must be sought in 
homes of leisure. Pictures and books loaned by 
those who have them may open windows for 
the poor into the world beautiful. Homes of 
wealth entertain, through her, parties of children 
or mothers. Food and clothing are received and 
placed where they will do the most good. In 
many ways, the deaconess bridges the gulf be- 



130 The Burden of the City 

tween rich and poor, and becomes herself a sort 
of peripatetic settlement, the difference being 
that the people go to the settlement while the 
deaconess goes to the people. 

At home the visiting deaconess is likely to 
spend hours in the "poor closet," hunting out 
garments for Fritz or Maggie or Gustav, prepar- 
ing lessons for her Sunday-school or industrial 
classes, or plans for her children's or mothers' 
meeting. She must meet callers, make out re- 
ports for pastor or superintendent, care for her 
room and wardrobe, and she does well if in the 
multiplicity of duties she can find an hour for her 
own soul's culture; and yet no one needs this 
more than she who is constantly giving of her 
best self for others. 

In the great rushing tide of human life pouring 
into our country from other lands, and from one 
part of the country to another, the most helpless 
elements are young, unprotected girls, and 
mothers with little children. These need to be 
safeguarded from the snares, the oppression and 
greed of the unknown world of the great city, 
and the deaconess on the dock and in the rail- 
road station finds a field for service as "Travel- 
lers' Aid," and many have had cause to bless her 
intelligent guidance and gentle ministrations. 
The close study of the Bible and its use in Chris- 
tian work, together with the practical training in 
personal work which a deaconess receives in her 
course of preparation, is of primary importance 
in evangelistic work whether in the mission, the 



The Deaconess in City Missions 131 

home or the street. Added to this the study of 
psychology and child life fits for various forms 
of work among children. 

Not all the city work of the deaconess is done 
within city limits, for waifs of the street are 
gathered into Homes, and these are often located 
in outlying villages or in the country. There are 
orphanages and homes of this character at Lake 
Bluff, and Urbana, Illinois, and in Verbank, New 
York. In the summer, " Fresh Air Work," in its 
varied forms, is a heavy tax upon the strength 
and resources of city deaconesses. 

"If I can put some touches of rosy sunset into 
the life of any human being," says George 
Macdonald, " I shall not have lived in vain." In 
several "rosy sunset" Homes, the tender hands 
of deaconesses minister to the needs of old peo- 
ple during their declining years. 

To be able to meet emergencies as they arise, 
and to live up to the requirements of her office, 
the deaconess must be kind, tender, sympathetic 
and yet decided. She should be fertile in re- 
sources and prompt in action, an expert in 
diplomacy, patient and tactful, and a shrewd 
judge of human nature. She must be able to 
turn nurse, cook, preacher or musician, in case of 
need, and to meet representatives of all classes of 
society with equal grace. To these advantages, 
she needs to add a constitution of steel and 
whalebone. All this without reference to the 
deep and strong religious life without which no 
woman should think of taking up this work. 



132 The Burden of the City 

But when all this is said, the real significance 
of the employment of unsalaried workers lies un- 
touched. It consists less in what the deaconess 
is, and what she does, than in the standard that 
the entire plan sets for Christian activity. How- 
ever full of human frailty the individual dea- 
coness may be, if the establishment of the office 
of deaconesses succeeds in bringing back into 
the church an almost forgotten ideal — though it 
be only an ideal — it has justified its place and 
presence in the world. The deaconess is a bless- 
ing less in what she is than in what she aspires 
to be. 

And is there not needed, in this money-mad, 
materialistic age, such a resetting of the almost for- 
gotten standard of sacrifice and service " for Jesus' 
sake." When the dollar is often the standard of 
value, not only in commerce but in character, it may 
be good to learn again the Christ lesson that not 
what a man gains but what he gives is the meas- 
ure of his worth to the world. And just this is 
the lesson of the office and work of the dea- 
coness. 



FIELD NOTES 

WHERE SUN NEVER SHINES 

Turn down this flight of dirty steps leading 
from the sidewalk. Never mind the vile odor 
that meets you half-way. You will get used to 
that. Don't pull the bell too hard. It's only an 



The Deaconess in City Missions 133 

old hand bell tied with a string and is likely to 
drop on the floor inside. Go carefully through 
this long, black passage; there will be a ray of 
light when the door is opened at the farther end. 
Here we are. " What a vile den," did you say ? 
Yes, but it means home to seven human beings. 
Five children learn here all this world has to give 
them for those two blessed words, home and 
mother. 

The few rays of daylight coming through that 
narrow window are helped out by this smoky 
kerosene lamp, and yet the room seems dark. 
Better gather your neat skirts closely around you! 
That kettle on the rusty stove contains pork and 
beans from the county agent. The odors, 
mingled with those of the lamp and the foul air 
of the basement, are not at all appetizing. 

Notice those old garments hung to dry on a 
line stretched across the room. What a contrast 
to your own sun-dried linen, fragrant with the 
scent of grass or whitened with frost. Have you 
ever frowned virtuously over the shortcomings 
of the city washerwoman ? Then think of 
washing done by the light of that dull lamp, and 
dried in this low, dirty room, and learn to be 
charitable. For the mother must wash or the 
children must starve. 

There are only the five children in the room. 
" Mother is out washing," explains the oldest 
girl. The sickly-looking baby sits on a high 
chair by the bare table. A tin wash basin takes 
the place of the missing chair-bottom, and in this 



134 The Burden of the City 

uncomfortable seat the poor little legs are doubled 
up in a way that suggests an entire absence of 
bones. He does not take kindly to your ad- 
vances but turns away his head and presently 
breaks out into a doleful crying. Did you ever 
notice a slum baby's cry ? There is no display 
of baby temper. It is too lifeless for that — no 
surprise or indignation finding vent in vigorous 
yells — but the dreary, just-what-I-expected look 
merely deepens a little and finds natural expres- 
sion in a hopeless wail, just as the gray, over- 
charged clouds melt into rain. 

You suggest milk as a panacea for infant 
grievances, but there is none in the house. It 
takes but a moment to bring some from the 
nearest bakery and warm it on the stove. The 
child drains the cup and its cries are hushed. 
The two next older look on hungrily, but say 
never a word. But there is plenty for them and 
they take the cup you offer and drink its con- 
tents at one breath. Their eyes thank you while 
your own are getting a little dim. Three babies 
and no milk! 

But what about the father ? Do you see that 
open door back of the stove, a black blot on the 
side of the room. It is the entrance to a tiny, 
low bedroom. It suggests the den of some 
animal, but there lies the father, sick with pneu- 
monia. There are no sheets nor pillow cases on 
the bed and the mattress is green with mold. 
Will he get well ? It is doubtful. He may get 
"so as to be around," and drag out a listless, 



The Deaconess in City Missions 135 

death-in-life existence, but real physical or 
mental health in such surroundings — impossible! 

You turn half indignantly to the little house- 
keeper, a thin slip of a girl eleven years old, but 
looking even younger as she stands bending 
backward with the weight of the baby in her 
arms. The words die on your lips as you meas- 
ure her slender strength against the weight of 
poverty, filth and ignorance, crushing the child- 
life out of her. What can she do as nurse, 
housekeeper and mother all in one ? 

You think of Hercules and his Augean stables. 
But Hercules needed for his task floods of water, 
and pure air and sunshine, and broad, free spaces. 
You wonder what even his strength would avail 
here; and suddenly you realize that to save this 
one family you have to face all the problems of 
the modern city. The health commission, the 
landlord question, the pauperizing influence of 
alms-giving, faulty education, labor and wage 
problems — all are concerned in the condition of 
things in this one cellar. 

« ikey " 
From the first he was something of a conun- 
drum to the workers at the mission. They came 
to notice a small, sober face, with a pair of big, 
black, unsmiling eyes always levelled straight at 
the speaker. The face was nearly always there, 
whether the service was a sermon, a grown-up 
prayer-meeting, or a children's meeting. When 
they undertook to make his acquaintance they 



l %6 The Burden of the City 

learned that his name was "Ikey," that he was 
nine years old, that he had younger brothers and 
sisters, and that his father kept a " store" where 
he dealt out cheap groceries in infinitesimal 
quantities to the poor people round about. For 
the rest, the unmistakable Jewish cast of features 
told its own story. 

Ikey always takes life in dead earnest. The 
deaconess who works in the mission avers that 
she saw him smile once, but no one else ever 
ventures such a statement. Doubtless he has his 
reason for not looking upon life as a laughing 
matter. A visitor from the mission went, one 
day, to call upon Ikey's mother, but was met 
with such an outburst of Jewish wrath that she 
never cared to repeat the experiment. 

One evening the minister asked those who 
wished to be Christians to raise their hands, and 
Ikey's hand went promptly up. The deaconess 
went to him, not certain that he understood what 
was meant by the action. She found that he was 
quite ready to go forward and kneel with the 
others at the altar. 

" Why do you want to do that ?" she asked; 
and, looking straight into her eyes, he answered 
soberly, "I want to know Jesus." That was 
enough, and she knelt by his side. 

" Do you know how to pray ? " she asked. 

" I can say, ' Our Father which art in heaven,' " 
he replied. "That's the only Christian prayer I 
know." And so he prayed "Our Father," and 
the deaconess tried to teach him more about Jesus. 



The Deaconess in City Missions 137 

Next day she called at the boys home. She 
was received with outward civility, and she tried 
as best she could to make the way smooth for 
the child's feet. As she was about to go, she 
offered her church card, saying, "I know this is 
not your church, but it could do no harm for you 
to come in occasionally and get acquainted with 
us." 

But then the father's struggling indignation 
burst forth. "No, we want nottinks of your 
church. We keep away. And when our shil- 
drens are shmall we keep them away; but when 
they get big like Ikey, then they will go in spite 
of us all, and you get them away from us. But 
we keep the shmall ones so long we can." 

AN « UNWORTHY CASE " 

"Is it worth while?" thought the deaconess 
nurse as she brushed and aired the dress she had 
just taken off, examining plait and gather for the 
"things creeping" which she was likely to find 
there. The worst of it was that the patient for 
whose sake she was braving these loathsome 
conditions seemed not to care in the least for her 
ministrations, never indicated by word or sign 
that it mattered to her whether she were cared 
for or not. 

But she was dying. The sunken eye, the 
cough that seemed to tear the wasted form to 
pieces, told that, at best, but a few weeks of life 
remained to her — dying with the apathetic sub- 
mission of a wounded beast that crawls away 



138 The Burden of the City 

from its fellows to meet the last enemy alone. 
But she had a soul, and Christ had died to re- 
deem her. 

And so the nurse went day after day, carrying 
food for the children and such comfort as she 
might for the woman, with never a sign from the 
dying woman that it meant aught to her. Is it 
any wonder that the nurse — being but human — 
was sometimes tempted to say in despair, "She 
has lived like a beast; why not leave her to die 
like one, since she does not care?" 

But not always had the poor creature lived 
thus. Good, garrulous Mrs. O'Brien, next door, 
was always ready with her testimony: "Sure, 
an' it's a hard workin' woman she's always been, 
an* seven years a widdy. It's many a night she's 
set up till afther midnight a-mendin' clo'es for 
the childer an' doin' her own work, afther 
washin' all day at the tubs. An' when she fell 
sick an' was turned on the strate for a bit of rent, 
it was meself that put me hand in me pocket an' 
made it right for her. An' she'll tell ye the same 
hersilf if ye'll ask her." 

One day the nurse, to cheer her own fainting 
courage, began to sing in her native tongue an 
old Norwegian hymn — a hymn with a ring of 
faith and victory in it. A sound from the bed 
made her turn. The woman was sobbing aloud. 

"Oh, that song! Where did you learn it? It 
was my mother's that she used to sing at home 
in the old country." 

From that time the apathy was gone. When 



The Deaconess in City Missions 139 

the end was very near, she said to the nurse, 
11 You have done for me what no other ever did 
or could. I give my children to you to find a 
home for them. As for me, it is all right; I am 
trusting the Saviour you pray to." And with the 
names of her children on her lips she entered the 
dark valley, comforted and sustained by the hu- 
man love which is but a shadow of that on the 
other side. Was it not worth while? 

HER ONLY TREAT 

A deaconess was planning with her Mothers' 
Club to spend a day with them in one of the 
parks, and the question of the best time for the 
excursion was under discussion. 

"Oh, don't have it earlier than the middle of 
June!" said one of the tired-looking women. 
"It'll be the only treat I'll have, and after that's 
over the rest of the summer will seem so long 
with nothing to look forward to." 

AMONG ITALIANS 

It was a pretty sight to one accustomed to the 
impassive face and restrained manners of the 
Anglo-Saxon to watch the animated faces of the 
women leaning eagerly forward when the dea- 
coness drew forth her little Italian Testament and 
began reading the words of the Saviour — words 
that reach every heart, of whatever race or na- 
tion. As the reader paused for a word of ex- 
planation she of the earrings would nod emphat- 
ically and, turning, repeat it to her husband. 



140 The Burden of the City 

The deaconess closed the book and quick as 
thought a pillow was whisked from the bed for 
her to kneel upon. These were her mission 
folk, and all, men, women and children, knelt to- 
gether, and in the soft, liquid Italian a prayer 
went up in which I could only distinguish the 
word "Padre/' It was enough — the Father 
heard and understood. 

A PENNY PROVIDENT CLUB 

The sewing school forms the base of operations 
for a Penny Provident Club, organized by the 
deaconess to promote habits of saving and 
economy. The pennies that would otherwise 
go for gum and candy are brought and ex- 
changed for stamps that are pasted into the 
little " bank books." When the amount reaches 
one dollar, interest is paid. Within a year 
$185.00 has thus been placed to the credit of the 
children. Many pathetic little incidents come 
out in connection with this work. One little 
girl lifted a pair of big brown eyes to her 
teacher's face and asked, "Can I have some 
other name put on my book 'stead of mine ? " 

"Why do you want to do that, dear?" was 
the query. 

"'Cause my little brother is in the crippled 
children's hospital and I want to give all my 
pennies to him," was the artless answer. 

"All my pennies" consisted of two cents a 
week which she earned caring for a neighbor's 
baby. 



The Deaconess in City Missions 141 

Often, after the small savings reach the sum of 
two, three, or five dollars, hard times strike the 
family. The father falls sick or loses his "job" 
and is obliged to draw on the little ones' savings 
to keep the wolf from the door. They are usually 
given up with complacency, and a new fund is at 
once begun. 

AT A HOME OF WEALTH 

A deaconess rang at the front door of a 
splendid mansion and asked if the mistress 
were at home. 

"Yes," said the servant, "but she is in 
trouble." 

11 Show me to her at once," said the caller. 

The wealthy woman was found in misery over 
a wayward daughter who had left her home. 

" How wonderful ! " she exclaimed, "that you 
should have come to me at this hour." 

The result was that the lost was found and the 
whole family lifted to a higher plane of life. 
— Youth's Companion. 

ONLY A ROSE 

In a poverty-stricken district lived a woman of 
dissolute habits, who had tasted the dregs of 
life, and was seldom sober. One day a deaconess, 
walking down the street with a fresh-blown rose 
in her hand, passed old Mag. The woman's 
eyes followed the rose hungrily, and the dea- 
coness stopped and handed it to her. 



142 The Burden of the City 

Old Mag shrank back, saying, " You wouldn't 
give it to me, would you ? " 

" Why, certainly, I will," was the answer, and 
she passed down the street, leaving the old 
woman staring at the rose in her hand. 

Three months after this, the deaconess was 
called to the bedside of a woman who was dying 
in a dingy garret. She drew from under her 
pillow a dried and faded rose, and said, "It is 
the rose you gave me. I often look at it, and it 
makes me think of home." 

It is only the story of a rose, but it tells of 
hungry hearts that may be turned to better things 
by little kindly deeds. — Sel. 

" WHERE ARE THE NINE?" 

Nine times within the past year one woman, 
wearing the deaconess garb, has been called 
upon to leave the work in which she was 
engaged to accept another position of responsi- 
bility. Each time the call has been made on the 
ground of the great need of that particular field, 
and she has been urged to consider whether it is 
not the Lord's will that she should accept it. 
And this, when the work in which she was en- 
gaged seemed to her the one absorbing oppor- 
tunity, and that to which she was called of God. 

Surely there is something wrong in this. God 
never made one person, man or woman, to fill 
ten places at once. And just as truly, if these 
other things need to be done — and it seemed they 
truly did — He has made some other woman 



The Deaconess in City Missions 143 

capable of doing each of them. What are these 
other nine women about? Are they doing work 
that a hundred others stand ready to do as well 
as they ? Are they frittering away their precious 
years with fancy work, social dissipation, friv- 
olous calls and amusements ? Is the world being 
made better because they are alive ? 

My sister, are you one of these nine ? I do 
not ask, if you are busy — who ever heard of a 
woman who was not busy ? — but are you busy 
about the very best things you are capable of? 

Do you know the very best thing a man or 
woman can do with a life is to give it away ? 
Actually to give it, freely, recklessly, gladly, as 
the Lord Jesus gave His ? Thousands of un- 
known saints and martyrs are doing this day by 
day for the sake of loved ones, for husbands, 
wives, children, parents. All honor to them. 
But there are thousands more who have no such 
tender and immediate ties — thousands who have 
time, talent, money, that might be used in a 
broader way for the sake, of the great, sick, 
sorrowful world. Don't sell your life. There is 
no great, uplifting joy in a commercial transaction. 
Give it, give it, and thank God for the privilege. 
Give it and see how the " joy of the Lord" will 
flow back, a great flood, to enrich your own 
heart and life. 

Plain living ? Hard work ? Uncongenial com- 
panionship? What does it matter? Serge is as 
warm as satin, love sweetens labor, and as for 
companionship, the Lord Himself will walk with 



144 The Burden of the City 

you. You will find Him in the weary, pitiful 
faces of mothers, and the innocent smiles of 
childhood. He said it— " Ye did it unto Me." 

Rise up, then, ye women that are at ease, ye 
careless daughters ! Give ear to the voice of 
Him that would call you from a life of self-seek- 
ing that leads to death to the life of self-renun- 
ciation which alone is true living. " The work 
of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of '• 
righteousness, quietness and confidence forever/' 
Peace, quietness, confidence — can you find them in 
idle pleasure-seeking ? But blessed will you be in 
sowing beside all waters deeds of peace and love. 

O my sisters! you " careless daughters" of the 
King — I ask you — not to be missionaries or 
deaconesses or evangelists — I ask you to search 
your own hearts by the Light that lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world, and ask your- 
self if some one of these nine vacant places be 
not waiting for you. — Northwestern Christian 
Advocate. 

DEACONESS NOTES 

The Romish Church has won its victories in America far 
more through its white-capped sisters than its black-cassocked 
brethren. A Catholic priest converted to Protestantism said 
recently in a public address, " The Catholic Church does not 
fear the Methodist Church, nor the Presbyterian Church, nor 
the Mennonite Church. But it does fear these women in little 
bonnets with white strings who are followed in the street by 
the children and who go into the homes and win the hearts of 
the mothers. They might shut the door in the face of priest or 
preacher, but who can shut the door in the face of a woman 



The Deaconess in City Missions 145 

who comes with heart full of love and hands full of flowers to 
nurse your sick child or to lift the burden of work and care 
from your wearied shoulders ? They are what the Catholic 
Church fears." 



In and near three of the principal cities of our land there 
are 5,300 " sisters." Think what it would mean to Protestant- 
ism to have in these cities 5,300 deaconesses. But we have 
some, and the number is growing. Hospitals, orphanages, 
schools — what may we not undertake once the now unused 
energies of our free women bend themselves to the work ? 



Every Protestant Church has now associated with it a board 
of women who are directing the mission energies of women in 
our home land. And the sociological problems of life ! What 
is not the deaconess of the home mission work doing to inter- 
pret to those in sheltered homes who have the benefits of 
kindly, refined association, the privations and hardships of the 
coarse and the degraded, those who have been deprived of their 
rightful heritage — a fair chance in God's good world ? Surely 
it is a great work to convince these half-maddened, desperate 
people that society is not a devouring monster to which must be 
contributed in a cruel way the toil, the life-energies, the virtue, 
and the goodness of the masses for the benefit of the few. As 
an interpreter of Christian sociology the deaconess, the Protes- 
tant Sister of Charity, who gives her life freely to others, is the 
best exponent. — Jane Bancroft Robinson. 



Why has the deaconess work been so successful ? Why is it 
attracting such eager attention and expectation from those who 
love God and humanity ? One might answer in the words of 
one of the wisest of our Bishops, " It furnishes the principal 
meeting-place between the Church and the lapsed masses." 
But there is, I believe, a more profound reason. The world 
wants mothering. Mother-love has its part to do in winning 
the world for Christ as well as father- wisdom and guidance. 



146 The Burden of the City 

The deaconess movement puts the mother into the Church. It 
supplies the feminine element so greatly needed in the Protes- 
tant Church, and thus is rooted deep in the very heart of hu- 
manity's needs. — Lucy Rider Meyer. 



BIBLE LESSON 
God's Call to Service and Its Blessings 

( To be read responsively) 
Rise up, ye women that are at ease ; hear my voice, ye care- 
less daughters. — Is. 32 ; 9. 

Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee saying : This is 
the way ; walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and 
when ye turn to the left. — Is. 30 : 21. 

Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear. 
Forget also thine own people, and thy father's house. 

So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty : for He is thy 
Lord; and worship thou Him. — Ps. 45: 10, II. 

Ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace. 

The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into 
singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. — 
Is. 55 : 12. 

I commend unto you Phoebe, our sister, which is a servant 
[deaconess] of the church that is at Cenchrea : that ye receive 
her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in 
whatsoever business she hath need of you : 

For she hath been a succor er of many, and of myself, also. 

Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in Christ Jesus : 
Unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches 
of the Gentiles. — Rom. 16; 1-5. 

Help those women that labored with me in the Gospel. — 
Phil. 4: 3- 

Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters. — Is. 32: 20. 



The Deaconess in City Missions 147 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

1. What is the fust authentic mention of the deaconess in 
literature ? 

2. What centres of deaconess work exist in Europe ? 

3. What church first introduced deaconesses into America? 

4. When and by what authority was the deaconess move- 
ment made a part of Methodist Church polity ? 

5. What beginnings of deaconess work have been made in 
other than Methodist denominations ? 

6. When and under what auspices was deaconess work in- 
corporated into the Methodist Church South? 

7. What are the differences between a deaconess and a city 
missionary ? 

8. What training should a deaconess receive ? 

9. Name various forms of work in which deaconesses are 
engaged. 

10. What is the relation of the deaconess to the Church ? 

11. How may church members cooperate with the deacon- 
ess, and thus increase the efficiency of her work ? 

12. What is the real meaning of the deaconess movement? 



COLLATERAL READING 

History of the Deaconess Movement, Rev. C. Golder. 
Eaton & Mains. #1.75. 

Deaconesses in Europe and their Lessons in America, Jane 
Bancroft Robinson. Eaton & Mains. 90 cents. 

Deaconesses, Lucy Rider Meyer. Eaton & Mains. 75 cents. 

Deaconess Stories, Lucy Rider Meyer. Hope Pub. Co., 
Chicago. #1.00. 

How to Help the Poor, Mrs. James T. Fields. Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co. 60 cents. 



148 The Burden of the City 

Friendly Visiting among the Poor, Mary E. Richmond. 
Macmillan. #1.00. 

Essays, Octavia Hill. May be obtained through Bureaus of 
Associated Charities. 10 cents. 

Publications of the denominational societies. The largest 
assortment is issued by the Woman's Home Missionary Society 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 150 Fifth Ave., New York 
City. 



CHILDREN'S WORK 



THE CHILD IN THE MIDST 1 

When the Lord of the great and the little, 

The potter whose hand shapes our clay, 
Sets a child in the midst of the market 

Where the world-peoples chatter all day, 
Sets a child with its innocent questions, 

Its flower-face dimpled and fine, 
In the very heart's core of the clamor, 

A thought of the Maker Divine : — 

And men, in their lust for dominion, 

Their madness for silver and gold, 
Crush the beauty and charm from that spirit, 

Make the flower-face withered and old, 
Bind the hands and the feet with a tether 

That childhood can never untie, 
Deem not that Jehovah unheeding 

Looks down from the heights of the sky. 

He sees, though we think Him unseeing, 

He knows when the factory wheels 
Grind down to the life-blood of children ; 

When the poor little bond-servant kneels 
In the pang of its frightful abasement ; — 

Though all men are deaf to its prayer, 
There is coming a dark day of judgment, 

And the Lord of the child will be there. 

From the mine where the midnight engulfs it, 

From the mill where the clogged air is thick 
With the dust of the weaving that chokes it ; 

From the home where it's fevered and sick 
With man's toil, when God meant it for gladness, 

The child in the midst, in our clay 
God-moulded, greed-marred, calls to heaven 

For the vengeance we're daring to-day. 

— Margaret Sangster. 

1 Reprinted from McClurSs Magazine by permission. Copy- 
right, 1904, by the S. S. McClure Company. 



V 

CHILDREN'S WORK 

A COLLECTION of clippings lies upon my 
library table. They have been gathered 
during the past six or seven years with 
no definite purpose in view, being merely such 
articles as appealed at the time to a reader inter- 
ested in city philanthropies, especially such as 
concern children. But though the collection 
claims no scientific value it is not without sug- 
gestiveness. It divides naturally into three parts. 
The first consists of clippings from the daily 
newspaper with such head lines as these: " Held 
up by Boy Bandits," " Boy Shoots another Boy," 
" Train Robbers were Boys," "School of Crime 
for Boys is Discovered," "Boys organize a Band 
of Burglars. Four of them arrested, ranging in 
age from eight to fourteen years. The one who 
tells of the robbery so small he has to be lifted 
up that the judge may see him." 

The second collection is for the most part from 
publications of a more dignified character — 
magazines, weeklies, organs of philanthropic so- 
cieties, etc. They contain descriptions of city 
missionary work, free kindergartens, work of 
the juvenile courts, fresh air camps, settlement 
work, experiments in boys' clubs, and other 



152 The Burden of the City 

enterprises carried on for the social betterment of 
the children of the " other half." 

The third, and the smallest of the three col- 
lections, is composed of clippings from religious 
journals which, with one exception, are appeals 
and exhortations to churches and pastors to give 
more attention to teaching the children and 
gathering them into the fold of the church. 

The moral, if moral there be to so cursory a 
collection of evidence, is: First: that there is a 
frightful tendency towards degeneration among 
the youth of our cities. It is safe to assume that 
this extends to both sexes, for though it is the 
boy who figures in police reports, it can be de- 
pended upon that the girls of a given locality are 
not essentially better than the boys. Second: 
that society is becoming aware of this tendency 
and is making a considerable, though inadequate, 
effort to meet the emergency with corrective 
agencies. Third: that the church is only be- 
ginning to realize the crisis in answer to the ap- 
peals of reformers. In justice to the church it 
must be said that the work of settlements and 
other philanthropies is largely carried on by in- 
dividuals who have had their inspiration from 
the teachings of Christ. Still it remains that 
merely social betterment stops short of that vital 
renewing of depraved nature which the churches 
believe essential to real reformation, and, be- 
lieving, should use their utmost efforts to bring 
about. But while social philanthropists point to 
what is being done in their special field, the 



Children's Work 153 

church is only just beginning to assert what she 
ought to do in hers. Leaders of thought in dif- 
ferent denominations call attention to this fact. 
Dr. Ellis, writing in the Christian Advocate 
Daily, says : 

11 We are neglecting the children of the church. 
The provisions which Methodism makes for 
retaining the children within its fold are not 
excelled in Protestantism. But while some 
churches faithfully devote their efforts to keep- 
ing their children while they have them, we 
persistently ignore our own plan, if, indeed, we 
are all aware that we have any such plan. We 
allow our children to pass out from our influence 
into a sinful, Christless world, and then give our- 
selves to the almost hopeless task of bringing 
them into the church. It is a tremendous mis- 
take and we are beginning to see it." 

A short time ago a pastor in reporting a re- 
vival for his church paper said: "We have had 
during the past four weeks sixty-four conver- 
sions, not counting the children." The principle 
of "not counting the children" has brought the 
church to the necessity of counting the vacant 
spaces where the children ought to be. It has 
brought us to the point of considering, if not 
counting, the innumerable multitudes of children 
wandering into forbidden paths. The church 
owes it to itself to save its own. It owes it to 
the world to go out into the byways and gather 
the neglected children of the tenement districts 
and train them for Christian citizenship. 



154 The Burden of the City 

The children of a past generation marched in a 
great procession through the streets of a city 
carrying a banner inscribed, "Tremble, tyrants, 
we shall grow up." It would be well if once 
there could march through the elm-shaded 
avenues of our wealthy districts the army of its 
poor children — thousands upon thousands — hun- 
ger-pinched children of the alleys, sharp-eyed 
street gamins, the city Ishmaelites, "little 
mothers " bending under their burdens, factory 
children robbed of their childhood; and on their 
banner should be written, "Tremble, civilization; 
tremble, church and state; we shall grow up." 

THE CITY'S WAIFS 

What is the value of a child ? We look at 
the plant as it unfurls its first tiny leaves with a 
sort of tender awe. It is so frail, so wonderful. 
All the promise of the future — sturdy stem 
and rich fruit — is in it. A finger would crush it, 
a breath turn it awry. A touch to-day is a 
gnarled knot in the tree trunk a century hence. 
But the babies, with all the potency of the 
future in their wondering eyes, with divine 
mysteries of life and character hidden in their 
unconscious hearts, are tossed "uncounted" into 
the black current of city life, to sink or swim as 
fate wills. Was it Huxley who said, " If I could 
have my choice to be born in the wilds of Africa 
or in a London slum, I would choose the for- 
mer" ? He knew that nature would be a more 
tender parent than civilization. At best the city 



Children's Work 155" 

is a hard stepmother, and to the child of poverty 
her tender mercies are cruel indeed. 

From the first the tenement child is deprived 
of his natural heritage — mother-love, father- 
protection, plenty of God's free air and sunshine, 
food and warmth enough to develop body and 
brain to its limit — what less could he claim of the 
world into which he is ushered ? 

Instead, he breathes foul vapors, he is fed with 
horrible concoctions, his tender brain is stupefied 
with tea, coffee and beer. His father is embruted 
with drink; his mother is ignorant of her duties 
and crushed under a burden of care and toil. 
The last baby is left to the care of the other 
babies, and family discipline is what might be 
expected. "He cried and cried/' said a boy of 
ten of his baby brother. "The more I played 
for him the harder he yelled. I got mad and 
give him a good thump on the head and then he 
went to sleep/' 

ENVIRONMENT 

Meantime, what influences are shaping the soul 
of this little heir of immortality ? The bird and 
the beast may pick up their food where they find 
it, but when the hungry little human animal 
picks his morsel from the fruit vender's stall the 
majesty of the law, in the person of a big, blue- 
coated policeman, swoops down upon him. He 
has no inherent sense of property rights, and his 
education supplies none. Authority is the police- 
man; authority is against him. Naturally he 



156 The Burden of the City 

grows shrewd in supplying his needs by outwit- 
ting the law. Truth and falsehood are unknown 
terms. The only thing he has to consider is 
what story best serves his purpose, and he de- 
velops abnormal cunning in concealing circum- 
stances derogatory to himself. Street car trans- 
fers are picked up on the corners and sold to 
waiting passengers. Coal from the trail of 
loaded wagons keeps alight the family hearth. 
But he soon learns that stores of the precious 
commodity heaped in vast coal sheds afford 
much easier picking, if only one can keep a sharp 
lookout for the* 'cop." An empty house is a 
treasure trove. Lead pipes and faucets can be 
sold to the junk man and no questions asked. 
Life now is full of excitement and adventure, and 
daring, breathless escapes. There are multitudi- 
nous stairways and blind alleys and devious pas- 
sageways along which one can fly, and dark 
sheds and cellars where, hidden, one can watch 
the policeman puffing harmlessly out of sight. 
Some other time he will cajole the representative 
of law, hang on his coat, and, in a truce of hostili- 
ties, curry favor by carrying beer for him from 
the saloon. 

For some inscrutable reason, to him, he is re- 
quired to attend school at times and seasons, and, 
in spite of protest, he has absorbed the ability to 
read and write a little. His mother tongue is 
Bohemian, German, Polish or Italian, but he has 
also learned the English, which his mother does 
not speak at all and his father but little— a fact 



Children's Work 157 

which gives him immense advantage over both, 
which he fully appreciates. 

It is not enough that temptations come inevita- 
bly through the struggle for existence, but com- 
mercial greed is laying traps for his childish feet. 
His boys' world is full of literature of the most 
lurid sort, blood-curdling stories of lawlessness 
and adventure. Doubtless he has smoked cigar- 
ettes and drunk beer from his babyhood, but the 
saloonkeeper uses every nefarious art at his com- 
mand to see that by no manner of means does he 
escape the alcoholic appetite. Teachers in pub- 
lic schools are constantly finding that candy sold 
to school children contains liquor. Called to the 
telephone one evening by one of my mission 
proteges, a little fellow of ten or eleven, I asked, 
" Where are you?" "In Raggio's saloon," was 
the answer. 

" Why do you go there to 'phone ? Why not 
go to a drug store ?" 

" Aw, them old 'phones are too high up. I 
can't reach only the saloon ones," came the co- 
gent and convincing reply. 

At a meeting of the Ohio State Liquor Dealers' 
League, one of the speakers made use of the fol- 
lowing language: "It will appear from these 
facts, gentlemen, that the success of our business 
is dependent upon the creation of an appetite for 
drink. Men who drink liquor will die, and if 
there is no new appetite created our counters will 
be as empty as our coffers. The open field for 
the creation of this appetite is among the boys. 



158 The Burden of the City 

After men are grown and their habits are formed 
they rarely ever change in this regard. It will be 
needful, therefore, that missionary work be done 
among the boys, and 1 make the suggestion, 
gentlemen, that nickels expended in treats to the 
boys now will return in dollars to your tills after 
the appetites have been formed. Above all 
things, create appetite." 

The passion for getting something for nothing, 
sharpened by a life of adventure and lawlessness, 
finds its gratification in all sorts of gambling de- 
vices. A visit to almost any of the shops where 
candy and supplies are sold, in the vicinity of our 
public schools, will reveal lottery schemes of 
various kinds— prize candies, slot machines and 
wheels of fortune, into which the children drop 
their pennies in the hope that, by a fortunate 
whirl, they will get more than they deposit. At 
recess these are surrounded by a crowd of 
youngsters trying their luck and discussing their 
gains and losses with each other. Fruit stores 
have rear rooms screened off where boys are per- 
mitted to play cards and dice. Wherever negro 
children gather, the policy shop flourishes, some 
times in barber shops, in coal offices, in old build- 
ings apparently deserted, or in the lofts of livery 
barns. Long before the child is able to discern 
good from evil he has become familiar with vice in 
its most loathsome forms, and the child who 
sees and knows all evil will accomplish a miracle 
if he keeps himself pure from it. In one police 
precinct in New York, where there were a hundred 



Children's Work 159 

licensed and unlicensed centres of social vice, it 
was recently found that children were given 
candies and pennies to distribute the cards of 
these houses, and boys were stationed at inter- 
vals in the street to give warning of the appear- 
ance of the police, a regular system of such 
"lighthouses" being maintained. 

WHO BIDS FOR THE CHILD? 

Of course there are laws against such boy traps 
as these, but laws need intelligence and public 
spirit for their enforcement, and in the great cen- 
tral districts the low standard of morality per- 
mits such vices to flourish unmolested. There 
are spasms of reform when preachers or news- 
paper reporters dip down into the moral filth and 
bring its unsavory conditions to the gaze of the 
public. Then the police raid these enterprises 
right and left ; newspapers air the results; good 
people lift their hands in horror, and law break- 
ers fly to cover and wait until the excitement 
subsides, when they return like flies to a honey 
pot. 

It is evident that the dive and the gambling 
den are making their bid for the boy. The 
saloon-keeper wants him. He is welcome at the 
cheap theatre and the dime museum, whose 
managers frequently distribute free tickets to 
school children. If the church, the mission and 
the settlement also want him they must bestir 
themselves and secure him before it is too 
late. 



160 The Burden of the City 

Meantime, what of the girl ? She has her own 
besetments, but they centre more around the 
home. She may be locked either in or out when 
the mother goes to her work, but if out she will 
not wander so free and far as her brother. But 
the home itself is a source of danger. Jacob Riis 
says: "The boundary line of the 'other half 
lies through the tenements. Here all influences 
make for evil, because . . . above all they 
touch family life with a deadly moral contagion/' 
The report of the Committee of Fifteen before 
referred to gives as a prolific source of vice these 
crowded tenements and the moral degradation 
which is their inevitable accompaniment. If the 
worst does not occur, there is such a lowering 
of standards of purity as to make the fatal step 
easy. Mere children who are guilty of the sins 
of adults constitute " the most pitiable and at the 
same time the most dangerous element in the 
problem of the social evil." Often it happens 
that because of the discrepancy between the 
character of the crime and the youth of the 
offender there is no handle by which the courts 
can take hold of the case. All that the judge can 
do is to give a useless warning and send the 
offender back to conditions that make moral 
reformation impossible. The public is ignorant 
of the extent of this evil, but wherever ignorance, 
depravity and bestial drunkenness are herded to- 
gether in swarming tenements one may well 
tremble for defenseless childhood. 



Children's Work l6l 

CHILD LABOR 

But however neglected the child may be up to 
the age of ten or twelve, soon after this he be- 
comes an important factor in the family equa- 
tion. A dollar or two a week added to the family 
income— especially if years of hardship or dissi- 
pation are beginning to tell upon the parents — is 
too important a matter to permit any question of 
the child's future development to be weighed in 
the balance with it. From the beginning it is 
expected that children will work for the parents. 
If physical or moral deterioration has gone too 
far, it is at this time that the child begins his 
career of vagrancy or crime which will land him 
in prison or the poorhouse. Otherwise he joins 
the army of child toilers which is becoming 
scarcely less a menace to the nation's welfare. 

When Elizabeth Barrett Browning stirred the 
heart of England with her cry, 

" Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers ? " 

America said, "That is for the Old World ; it 
will never apply here." But, insidiously, with the 
upward sweep of our manufacturing interests, has 
come the "under feed" of the system, the vast 
army of the children upon whose labor much of the 
profit of the system depends. The last Bulletins 
of the Labor Bureau give startling revelations as 
to the extent to which the great textile factories, 
the silk mills, the glass works, as well as the 
mines, are appropriating the young flesh and 



162 The Burden of the City 

blood of the nation. Between 1890 and 1900 the 
number of children in the United States employed 
in gainful occupations was increased by almost a 
million. Eight hundred textile factories of the 
South alone employ fifty thousand children. 
Certain trades, such as candy, snuff, tobacco, 
and paper box manufacturing, are called u baby 
trades " because of the large proportion of child 
toilers they employ. 

It is true that the tasks to which children are 
set are not those requiring great strength or 
skill, but long hours of close application to any 
simple mechanical task become maddening in 
their monotony, and for children of tender years 
such unnatural restraint works grave havoc in 
health and intellectual development. 

The so-called "restrictions" imposed by some 
state laws upon child labor are themselves a 
ghastly commentary upon the inhuman demands 
of the great corporations that employ children and 
are abetted by the ignorance and selfishness of 
parents. When strong men are clamoring for an 
eight-hour law we find Pennsylvania and Texas 
passing laws that their children shall not be em- 
ployed more than twelve hours a day. North 
Carolina and Alabama say that children must not 
work more than eleven hours until they are 
twelve years of age. Happy childhood, to be so 
tenderly protected! One would think that 
Nature herself would make such limitations un- 
necessary by letting the worn little frame stagger 
into merciful unconsciousness after twelve hours 



Children's Work 163 

ot constant toil. Indeed, this sometimes happens, 
as when in New Jersey an exhausted little night 
toiler fell asleep on his way home and was killed 
by a passing train. Georgia permits its children 
to toil from sunrise to sunset, and its legislature, 
under the influence of Northern mill owners, has 
twice within the past year refused to prohibit 
the employing of children under ten years of 
age. 

Many trades demand night labor from children. 
In the steel works and rolling mills boys work 
eleven and a half hours at night, with only 
twenty-five minutes for rest and luncheon. The 
glass industry which has developed so rapidly 
within the last thirty years in Illinois, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, has been called 
the "child-eating ogre" because of the cruel 
conditions it imposes upon mere babies. In 
these works each blower requires two or three 
boys to carry the bottles from the moulder to 
the ovens. The intense heat of the furnaces 
and the dust make the conditions the worst 
possible. The blowers often " adopt " homeless 
and friendless boys to use for this purpose. It is 
frequently discovered that dissolute men and 
women gather children from poorhouses and 
orphan asylums, make affidavits that they are of 
legal age, when in fact they are but from seven 
to ten, hire them out to these factories and live 
upon the proceeds. These wretched children, 
sometimes called "blowers' dogs," are kept 
trotting at their highest rate of speed for hours 



164 The Burden of the City 

at a time. One factory inspector relates that 
they dared not stop even to answer her questions, 
but gave their replies piecemeal as they hurried 
back and forth at their tasks. 

It was the State Federation of Woman's Clubs 
who introduced the bill for the reformation of 
these abuses in Illinois, and women like Mrs. 
Florence Kelly and Jane Addams who helped to 
fight it through and secure the enaction of the 
"most stringent child labor law ever passed/' 
In many states the battle still rages between en- 
lightened public sentiment and the greed which 
would not hesitate to coin flesh and blood into 
dollars. If children are protected from the ra- 
pacity of soulless corporations it must be because 
the good women of the states take up their 
cause. 

Naturally the plea is advanced that to forbid 
children to work in mills and factories would en- 
tail suffering upon their families or throw them 
upon public charity for support. But experience 
directly contradicts this. The burdens imposed 
upon relief agencies by the enforcement of 
educational and child labor laws are not to be 
compared with those imposed by an army of 
stunted, undeveloped, ineffective men and 
women, the consequence of long hours of 
labor for the growing child. 

In one city the Woman's Clubs cooperated 
with the Bureau of Charities to pension every 
widow necessarily dependent for her livelihood 
upon the earnings of her children under fourteen. 



Children's Work 165 

The number of such cases was almost incredibly 
small. 

The truth seems to be that child labor not 
only demoralizes the child, but its effect reaches 
to the parent, appealing to his selfishness or 
greed in a way to stifle natural parental instinct. 
A father lamented the death of his little girl be- 
cause she was such a good spinner — the best 
" hand "he had — and such experiences are not 
rare. Not even a few days can be granted the 
child in the heat of summer to escape from the 
factory for a glimpse of green fields or ocean's 
blue. " Concetta cannot go at New Lenox," 
wrote Concetta's older sister in response to an 
invitation to a fresh air party, "because she is 
working and she does not know anything about 
it ; if she comes she will not be able to go to 
work again [/. e., she will lose her position]. 
Her grandma thanks you just the same, but Con- 
cetta cannot go." 



« WHO DID SIN ? " 

Where lies the responsibility for such outrages 
against childhood ? Not wholly with the parents, 
almost as ignorant and helpless as the children, 
and themselves the product of just such a child- 
hood as they are perpetuating. 

" Every child who goes out of life because its 
right to light, air, and sunshine, has not been 
protected, is a charge against the church," says 
the author of "The Leaven in a Great City." 



166 The Burden of the City 

''Every child whose life record is shadowed, black- 
ened, because his right to education, to training, to 
freedom to develop physically, mentally, morally, 
spiritually, was denied him, is evidence of the 
failure of the church to live up to the light which 
Christ left to its keeping." 

This seems a stern calling to account, but can 
the church escape the responsibility ? Not until 
it has done all in its power, not until it has sacri- 
ficed, labored and suffered — not to the limit of 
human power, but to the limit of human power 
linked to divine — can it say its skirts are clear 
from the blood of the innocents. Two men 
were walking through the slums of a great city 
and one, a sceptic, said to the other, " Here, at 
least, you must admit that Christianity has been a 
failure." "Not at all," said the other. "It has 
never been tried." When Christian men decline 
to accept office lest they should smirch themselves 
with the corruption of city politics, when good 
women turn away their faces from the knowl- 
edge of evil lest their consciences should be 
shaken and their peace disturbed, can the church 
claim to have fairly tried the power of Chris- 
tianity to save the slums ? Something is being 
done — much, it seems, until compared with the 
illimitable need — but until the forces of the church 
" march through the cities of the poor, an army," 
sweeping before them social sins and civic abuses, 
never let it know rest from effort or peace from 
the stings of accusing conscience. 



Children's Work 167 

JUVENILE COURTS 

Among the outposts of Christian philanthropy 
one recently planted on the farthest picket line is 
the juvenile court. Its purpose is to save way- 
ward or neglected children from the degrading 
association of police courts and jails. A court 
especially constituted for children's cases, a judge 
selected for his intelligence, tact, and sympathy 
with unfortunate childhood, and a corps of pro- 
bation officers like-minded — these constitute the 
machinery of the court. 

How does it operate? A boy of twelve is 
brought in on complaint of one of the probation 
officers. He has stolen coal from the cars or 
fruit from the street vender. He is shown to be 
a truant from school and incorrigible at home. 
Under the old regime his case would have been 
disposed of in five minutes by sending him to 
some juvenile prison or "reformatory," while 
the court turned its attention to matters of more 
moment than the fate of a child. 

But here the judge makes it his business to in- 
quire into the home life with a view to finding 
out "who did sin," this child or his father, his 
mother, or society. In nearly every case he is 
shown to be more sinned against than sinning. 
The judge combines the kindness of a father and 
the authority of the magistrate. He shows the 
boy the desirability of reforming, and tells the 
parents how to help him, their weakened author- 
ity being backed up by that of the court. The 
boy is then " paroled " under the care of the pro- 



168 The Burden of the City 

bation officer of the district in which he lives. 
To this officer or to the judge he must report 
once a week. The officer also visits his home 
and advises, warns, instructs, as necessary. In a 
majority of cases the treatment is effective. The 
boy comes to recognize the law as a power ar- 
rayed on his side — to help him fight the battle 
against his worst self and against his environ- 
ment. If he continues insubordinate the reform- 
atory institution comes later. 

Clearly the success of the system must depend 
almost wholly upon the personality of the judge 
and the officers. "The children must be edu- 
cated and loved out of their ignorance and deso- 
lation." But childhood makes its own appeal to 
the best elements of the best men and women, 
and the history of the movement is illuminated 
by rare characters as distinguished for kindly 
hearts as for wise heads. 

Once the idea of reforming rather than punish- 
ing the wayward child had taken root, it spread 
rapidly. Within the past five years nearly half 
the states of the Union have adopted the plan 
with modifications. It has travelled over seas, 
and is being tried in London and Japan. Wom- 
an's societies and charitable agencies have been 
the agitators and promoters of the movement. 
In Atlanta the organization of the juvenile court 
was the almost immediate effect of the National 
Conference of Charities held there in 1903, in- 
spired by the eloquence of a Maryland justice and 
a Colorado judge. 



Children's Work 169 

In practice the system is shown to be not only 
effective but economical. A Baltimore judge 
says, "It has been demonstrated that it is easier 
and cheaper to prevent crime than to punish it." 
The chief probation officer in New York sub- 
stantiates his testimony with statistics. After 
fifteen months' trial of the plan he says, "There 
is small cause for complaint against the conduct 
of the children now on probation. They report 
with gratifying regularity, often as many as 150 
boys and girls in a day. The probation of chil- 
dren has been a great saving to the county treas- 
ury. For instance, during the past fifteen months 
1,204 children have been released on parole. At 
least fifty per cent, of these would have been 
committed to institutions under the old plan. At 
$104 per year per capita, this represents a saving 
of $72,904." 

Judge Lindsay of Colorado, whose success in 
dealing with the street Arab makes him one of 
the most unique figures among the judges of 
juvenile courts, gives the public a bit of experi- 
ence: 

Every Saturday is devoted to children's cases. 
At nine the court opens, and there are probably as- 
sembled in the court room 250 boys. They are 
all probationers who have been tried from two 
weeks to two years before. Probably 100 of 
them have gone through the rain baths in the 
basement of the court-house. Three hundred 
copies, current number, of The American Boy, 
Men of To-morrow and Success have been dis- 
tributed. No juvenile court boy who is 



170 The Burden of the City 

" square " will take these things and read dime 
novels. I spend fifteen minutes talking to these 
boys, generally taking for a title for my discourse 
some subject that immediately gains a boy's at- 
tention. For instance, "snitching " — meaning to 
"peach" or to tell. Some splendid lessons may 
be instilled under this title — the difference be- 
tween the tattle-tale, the sissy-boy, the goody 
boy, and a real boy, what it means to be an ac- 
cessory before or after the fact in the commis- 
sion of crime, guilty knowledge, with a few 
stories woven in — lessons which gain a tremen- 
dous hold upon a boy and leave a positive good 
effect. For instance, after the Saturday morning 
talk on "snitching," the boys of the juvenile 
court brought in more men for unlawfully selling 
liquor and tobacco to minors than were brought 
into court by the police department for the 
twenty years during which such laws have been 
upon the statute books. It was all done by be- 
ing " square," and without the slightest semblance 
of detective work. 

Talks on "jiggering," "ditching," "shag- 
ging," etc., furnish topics equally as prolific for 
the court of Boyville. The boys come up to re- 
port as their names occur in the alphabet, under 
the call A, B, C, etc. Their reports are read — 
furnished by their teachers. A working boy re- 
ports in the evening, and nothing but his pres- 
ence and his own report of conduct is required. 
It is a sort of a little club meeting where there is 
talk, cheer and encouragement. Each boy is 
praised, stiffened and encouraged, and there will 
not be five really unsatisfactory reports out of 
two hundred. These five must come to see me 
at a special time. 

There is not a day in the week that I do not 
hear informally a boy's case at the close of a 
busy session of a civil court. To-day as I came 



Children's Work 171 

from the bench at five o'clock there were eight 
boys waiting to see me. It is seldom that 1 can 
leave my chambers before six-thirty in the even- 
ing, and hardly an evening that 1 am not required 
to return. Yet there is such a joy and fascination 
in work of this kind and in the wonderful results 
that follow, that instead of fatigue that would 
naturally result from such effort, it is usually the 
reverse. 

Child-saving work done like this, from the 
heart out, whether carried on in the name of 
church or state, is surely mission work of the 
most heroic sort. 

The influence of women in securing this re- 
formative legislation and in making its work 
successful has been indispensable. In many 
cities most of the probation officers are women, 
their sympathy, tact and patience making them 
especially fit for work demanding so much of 
socialized motherhood. Judge Tuthill, first judge 
of the first juvenile court, said once to a deacon- 
ess, "Why do not you women take up this 
work (of probation officers) ? We need just 
such women — women with conscience, faith and 
devotion. No others have any business in the 
work." 

OTHER AGENCIES FOR GOOD 

But while juvenile courts, with their associated 
parental schools and detention homes, are strug- 
gling with the problem of the delinquent, settle- 
ments and churches are trying to substitute for 
the evil in his environment things good and use- 



172 The Burden of the City 

ful. The motive of social and industrial work is 
the supplementing of the work of the home 
where it fails in its duties, as the work of the 
juvenile court adds its authority to the support of 
family discipline and training where that fails. 
The creche, or day nursery, takes the baby from 
its mother's arms as she goes out to her daily 
toil, and returns it to her at night, clean, well-fed 
and cared for. Marjory Hall, secretary of the 
National Federation of Day Nurseries, makes the 
following estimate of the financial side of this 
transaction: "The actual cost per child in the 
nursery has been estimated at twenty-five cents a 
day. Every twenty-five cents expended by the 
nursery for the child enables the mother to earn 
one dollar. Of this she pays to the nursery five 
cents; the remaining ninety-five cents she can 
apply towards the maintenance of her home. 
What this expenditure means to the child has 
never been written and cannot be estimated in 
dollars and cents. It means proper food, bath- 
ing, sleep, regularity in methods and manage- 
ment, and the service of trained workers in every 
department. Later, it means the conduct of 
work and play under kindergarten principles and 
the formation of habits of order, cleanliness, 
courtesy and obedience, which are to form the 
basis of character in after life. These habits 
revolutionize, in many instances, the habits of 
the home itself, and influence it always." 
Through the day nursery cooperation with the 
home in a very vital way is secured, and it is the 



Children's Work 173 

advance guard of the kindergarten, that brightest 
flower of Christian philanthropy. 

Ten years ago an intelligent man interested in 
reforms spoke of the kindergarten as a "fad." 
Even now there are those who see nothing in it 
save a connecting link between the home and the 
school — a place where children can be got out of 
the way, where they are taught to sing little 
songs and make things. The idea of the kinder- 
garten as a factory where life is moulded and 
character shaped in its most plastic stages, they 
have never grasped. In San Francisco the rec- 
ords of 9,000 children who have passed through 
kindergarten training have been searched, and of 
the number only one has turned out a criminal, 
and that one was feeble-minded. As the editor of 
the Century remarks, "You cannot catch your 
citizen too early to make a good citizen of him," 
and the day nursery and the kindergarten give 
the first opportunity to catch the future citizen. 

From across the hall as I write come the tinkle 
of a piano, the rhythmic patter of children's 
feet and the clapping of small hands, and once 
the wail of a little newcomer, as yet unrecon- 
ciled. But I know there will be no sound of 
blows, no fretful voices, no agonized gasp as a 
child is plumped angrily down upon a chair and 
bidden to " stay there." A glimpse through the 
door will reveal happy faces all alight, tossing 
curls and flying steps. There are dolls and pic- 
tures and flowers and fishes, and over all that at- 
mosphere of love in which little souls, relieved 



174 The Burden of the City 

of the bondage of fear and oppression,, can open 
out into the sunshine as God intended. 

Of the homes from which many of these chil- 
dren come one learns in unconscious hints from 
the children themselves. It was a Hull House 
kindergarten in which the little folks were exam- 
ining the picture of a harvest scene — the woman 
reclining, the man standing by quietly mopping 
his brow. After looking at it attentively a boy 
said, "Well, he knocked her down, didn't he?" 

But the influence of the kindergarten does not 
stop with the child. There is the mothers' meet- 
ing, or the club, with its discussions on food, 
sleep, play, cleanliness, manners, health, house- 
work and the like. There are the visits of the 
teachers to the homes of the pupils, and the 
visits of the mothers, and sometimes the fathers, 
too, to the kindergarten. There have even been 
held, it is said, fathers' meetings. Certainly the)' 
might be a means of grace. The success of kin- 
dergarten methods in the management of chil- 
dren is a revelation to parents, and they come to 
acquire "new parental manners." One observer 
said, "I used to hit my Josie something awful, 
and now I don't any more." Another stopped 
pawning her boy's clothes for drink after he 
entered the kindergarten. One mother moved to 
another house that they might have "light, air, 
and clean walls." Another said she had only 
lived since she had known the mothers' club, it 
had opened to her such different lines of thought 
and better ways of dealing with her children. 



Children's Work 175 

One husband said to his wife, " Be sure and go 
to the meeting; when you get home you act 
lively, like you did before we were married." 

There is a close bond between the kindergarten 
and the home, and its spell is felt even upon the 
neighborhood. More and more are social settle- 
ments and churches finding it a necessary means 
of access to darkened homes and neighborhoods. 

The kindergarten and the kindergarten idea 
have been actively useful in the relief of crippled 
and defective children. To the inspiration of its 
spirit may be credited also the summer play- 
grounds and much of the impulse towards vaca- 
tion schools, and the kindlier and more natural 
relations between children and teachers in the 
higher grades of schools. "America is bravely 
attempting to be a true democracy, and the 
American kindergarten is forever strengthening 
the foundations of that democracy in its influence 
upon the children, and, through them, upon the 
community at large." No greater service could 
be performed for the state and nation than to 
institute such a crusade that every child — espe- 
cially every child in the poorer portions of the 
community — should have the privileges of a good 
kindergarten. 

A magnificent opportunity is open for some 
philanthropist in the building of a great model 
tenement especially for mothers who must go 
out to labor for the greater part of the day. It 
should be constructed on approved plans with 
access to sunshine and air, and with bath-rooms, 



176 The Burden of the City 

laundry, and other needful " water privileges/' 
But its central idea should be its day nursery and 
kindergarten where the mothers could leave their 
little ones during the day and have them with them 
at night. If other ''model tenements" can be 
made to pay a fair rate of interest upon the in- 
vestment, this also might, or, if the nursery and 
kindergarten are found to be too heavy a drain 
upon the profits, they could be aided, as in other 
places, by gifts. No enterprise would be a saner 
effort for good, or meet a real need in a more 
practical way. 

OUTDOOR HELPS 

Since Mr. Riis' vigorous campaigns in New 
York, playgrounds for children are coming to be 
a recognized necessity. Small parks, roof gar- 
dens, "boys' corners," and other nooks for rec- 
reation are blossoming out, even in the poorest 
districts — old, ramshackle tenements often being 
condemned and torn away for the purpose. Here 
the children may, without committing a crime, 
exercise their limbs and their lungs, and work 
off harmlessly a vast amount of that which 
speedily becomes total depravity if allowed to 
ferment. Vacation schools and summer gar- 
dens, with their opportunities for nature study, 
are modern developments of the wiser charity. 

Year by year an ever-increasing army of little 
tenement dwellers turn their pale faces to the 
country, coming back a few weeks later with 
sun-browned cheeks and new life throbbing 



Children's Work 177 

through all their being. Cities that have ocean 
or lake front naturally turn thitherward for sum- 
mer recreation. Sanitariums, baths, boat excur- 
sions, offer fleeting draughts of the wine of life 
that comes in pure breezes over sunlit wastes of 
water. Inland cities find other ways for bring- 
ing the city child and nature together. St. Paul, 
through its health commissioner, utilized a sand 
bar in the Mississippi River. Trees were planted 
and shelter pavilions, bath-houses and a gym- 
nasium erected. A menagerie adds to its attrac- 
tions and a day nursery to its effectiveness. 
Here, it is said, on one holiday 7,000 children 
romped and shouted to their hearts' content. 
Boston and San Francisco are making interesting 
experiments in the line of boys' summer camps. 

Through various organizations thousands of 
children are each year sent into country homes as 
guests of the farmers or villagers. This form of 
philanthropy has its drawbacks, however, owing 
to the difficulty the country dweller has in under- 
standing the trickery and unblushing mendacity 
of his guest. There is also a difficulty in finding 
just that stage of picturesque poverty that agrees 
with preconceived ideas. If the children are sent 
as taken from the streets, there is the discovery that 
rags and tatters have accompaniments of odors, 
dirt, and creeping things not " nominated in the 
bond." But if the mother sits up o' nights and 
scrimps her family to the hunger point to send 
her child to the country in a fresh muslin and 
some frivolous bit of cheap finery, the country 



178 The Burden of the City 

host may be disappointed that she did not receive 
a real slum child, and conclude that some things 
have been grossly exaggerated. 

In a majority of cases, however, these outings 
result in great good not only to the child but to 
its entertainers. Many a country minister has 
welcomed the opportunity to give his people 
something to awaken them from the complacent 
selfishness into which the best of people fall when 
there is no appeal to their sympathies. Hearts 
have been touched to tenderer issues, and lasting 
friendships have been formed between the city 
waif and his hosts — friendships helpful to both. 
"I think we are receiving, rather than extending 
a blessing," is the sentiment frequently ex- 
pressed. 

On the other hand, glimpses of an idyllic ex- 
perience come back to the city in letters written 
by the children to parents and friends. "Dear 
mamma," writes one impressively, "I arrived 
safely. Grass is everywhere. I could tell the 
difference in the air as soon as I got out of the 
city." Another says, "I have a bedroom of my 
own; it has four windows in it." Another gives 
as a startling discovery, " We live up-stairs and 
down-stairs. They are very rich people here." 
It was a little Italian child who, after creeping for 
the first time into a clean, white bed, concluded 
that after all there must be some mistake about 
its being intended for him, and crawled out to lie 
all night long upon the floor. 

But of all country outings, none have touched 



Children's Work 179 

a tenderer chord than a camp of little cripples on 
the shores of Lake Michigan. Sand has been 
said to be to recreation what oatmeal is to litera- 
ture; out of a little of the one you can get a vast 
amount of the other. And here was beautiful 
white sand by the acre — sand to roll in, sand to 
bury one's self in. This alone would have af- 
forded delight enough. But cover a portion of 
the sand with deep forests of maple, larch and 
hemlock; plant it with shrubs and lovely creep- 
ing things, with ferns and berries and blossoms; 
break it up with wild ravines and hills, round 
which wind paths with rustic bridges and hidden 
dells and all sorts of dear surprises; border it 
with a lake whose blue waves lap the shore and 
ripple and dance away back to the very sky. 
Then gather from the city byways and alleys 
half a hundred of its neglected and unloved ones, 
those with withered limbs and deformed bodies, 
imprisoning souls that can suffer, and place them 
here. Give them for a schoolroom a great white 
tent under the trees ; fit it up with hammocks and 
swings and easy wheel chairs; add two police- 
men, amiable giants, whose sole business and 
pleasure it seems to be to carry the helpless ones 
about; bring clay for modelling, raphia for weav- 
ing, bring pencils and paints and scissors, bring 
live pets — white mice, rabbits and birds, and a 
motherly hen with her downy brood; place in 
the corner a real Indian tepee; bring all the treas- 
ures of water and woodland to open doors into 
the fairyland of Science. Then place over all 



180 The Burden of the City 

this, as its presiding genius, a woman with a 
mother-heart big enough to take in all these un- 
lovely ones and love them as only a Christ-in- 
spired heart can love, and for one blissful month 
they may well believe themselves in Paradise, no 
matter what the other eleven may bring. 

Too good to be true ? But it is all true, and a 
great deal more of which space will not permit 
the telling. The setting for this most beautiful 
charity is the park belonging to the Forward 
Movement, a Chicago settlement. And this is by 
no means the only "crippled children's camp" 
the country produces, but is a type of what may 
be done by hearts touched with pity for the most 
helpless and most unfortunate of all. 

CLASSES AND CLUBS 

But summer days are fleeting, and with Sep- 
tember there comes a general readjustment of the 
processes of life, not only on the boulevards, but 
among the tenements. As the big, dingy school- 
houses begin again to swarm with children, life 
becomes strenuous with the mission workers. 
Boys, whose mysterious disappearance dated 
from the first warm day of summer, begin to 
hang about the mission doors and inquire en- 
gagingly when "our club" will open again — as 
if it had not been "open " all the long summer 
days. Small girls who have swarmed like midges 
on door-steps and curbs, come in twos and threes 
and half-dozens, and shyly inquire when the 
" basket class " or the "turning school " begins. 



Children's Work 181 

As teachers and leaders come back from their 
summer ilittirig, work opens along new 
lines. 

It has been charged against the public school 
that it is "pulling all kinds of children through 
the same hole." This cannot be said of the mis- 
sion schools, for the entertainment must be suited 
to the taste of the small subject, or the wander- 
ing will cannot be restrained at all. There must 
be brightness, interest, and variety, and, above 
all, that which most surely wins the child-heart, 
the sunshine of love and good cheer. 

A Saturday sewing school there will surely be, 
with its graduated classes, from the lowest, where 
tiny fingers sew gayly-colored worsteds through 
perforated cards, to the highest, where amid much 
subdued chatter and giggling the "big girls" are 
initiated into the mysteries of dressmaking and 
fancy work. Kitchen-garden will teach the 
children what the mothers have neither time nor 
ability to teach them — that housework may be- 
come a delightful art rather than a bore. The 
original type of kitchen-garden where miniature 
garments are washed in imaginary water and 
boiled in a make-believe boiler over a purely 
hypothetical fire, to the accompaniment of sense- 
less little songs, is being modernized into meth- 
ods that pay more respect to the child's growing 
intelligence. The principle is still learning to do 
by doing, but there is more doing and less making- 
believe. One excellent teacher takes her class at 
intervals into her own beautifully ordered home, 



182 The Burden of the City 

and lets them, under her instruction, make a bed, 
build a fire, set a table, or scrub a sink. 

" Huh, my dad 'ud think I was crazy if I set a 
table like that to home," said one girl, surveying 
a neatly-arranged table, perhaps for the first time 
in her life. Nevertheless, she put in a plea at 
home for a table-cloth, and, being accustomed to 
her own way, she succeeded in obtaining one. The 
parents, thinking perhaps that, as with Hamlet, 
if 'twas madness there was "method in it," were 
rather proud of the effect. When Maida de- 
manded that her father should serve the family 
before commencing to eat, there was serious de- 
mur; but once more Maida carried her point, and 
little by little there have been introduced into that 
home "gentler manners" if not "purer laws." 

Along with other lessons in housewifely arts 
the junior cooking class will have a prominent 
place. It may be hard to persuade the mothers, 
fixed in the grooves of old habits, to enter classes 
in domestic science, but the girls will take to them 
as naturally as ducks to water. 

Cooking should be taught as an economical 
measure. Edward Atkinson estimates that one 
billion dollars are lost annually through poor and 
wasteful cooking. It should be taught as a sani- 
tary measure. Children brought up without 
wholesome and sufficient food become puny and 
starved. When they grow older and are com- 
pelled to work they break under the nervous strain 
and become an easy prey to tuberculosis and 
other diseases. 



Children's Work 183 

Cooking should be taught as a temperance 
measure. The working man who goes to his 
hard labor from a meal of sodden potatoes, sour 
bread, and muddy coffee, suffers from an unrest, 
a nervous irritation that gives him a morbid but 
overwhelming craving for stimulant; a craving 
that finds ready satisfaction in the ever-present 
saloon. Much of our intemperance has its origin 
in poor cooking. 

Cooking should be taught as a moral measure. 
11 Give me the power to regulate the dietetic hab- 
its of a people," says a noted scientist, "and I 
will show you in one generation a people more 
moral in character and more susceptible to re- 
ligious impressions than before. " If enthusias- 
tically taught it will be as enthusiastically learned. 
Exhibitions and entertainments given by the 
classes in domestic science afford object lessons 
to mothers and help to carry the reform into the 
homes. 

Constructive work not only fascinates, but 
trains and educates the child. It also corrects 
much of the tendency towards destructiveness, 
as they have more respect for a product when all 
the processes of its manufacture have been ob- 
served. Basket-weaving, broom-making, cob- 
bling, Venetian wire work, are all popular, but 
anything that is good to be made and suited to a 
child's capacity will serve the purpose. 

Sloyd and carpentering not only develop a 
skilled hand and correct eye, but they call for 
habits of neatness, accuracy and thoroughness. 



184 The Burden of the City 

They demand honesty in effort, since a touch of 
slovenliness anywhere is sure to be brought to 
light in fitting the pieces together. 

The gymnasium is the most popular resort, 
but it is the centre of more differences of opinion 
between pupils and teacher than any other place. 
The amount of "creaturely activity" which the 
average boy has to work off before he can be 
made amenable to reason has been the despair of 
more than one well-regulated instructor. "Pic- 
ture to yourself a very large empty room," says 
Winifred Buck, ' ' having facilities for every sort of 
game, and a small but complete gymnasium open- 
ing out of it. Then imagine your surprise when 
the boys, for whose use the room and the gymna- 
sium were intended, refuse on entering to become 
part of any organized game or play. This surprise 
rapidly turns to dismay when their real prefer- 
ences become evident. Dignified schoolboys, 
their books thrown aside, become for the mo- 
ment irresponsible animals, shrieking and howl- 
ing, throwing themselves against the walls, 
lying on their backs, their legs waving in the air, 
and dropping in dizzy, giggling heaps all over 
the floor. A scene like this makes one feel that 
time and money are wasted in providing op- 
portunities for them. And yet, after half an 
hour of this sort of play there will be a gradual 
straightening up of the rolling, squirming figures, 
a choosing of sides for a football game, and a 
gentle scramble to remote corners by the blood- 
less ones, armed with checker boards. The 



Children's Work 185 

proper balance between brain and bodily activity 
has been brought about in the half hour of ap- 
parently wasted time, and the animals are once 
more intelligent human beings." 

Through all work and play must run the spirit 
of organization, finding expression in the club, 
in which an increasing amount of responsibility 
is placed upon the children themselves. " It is 
by the boy's club/' says Jacob Riis, "that the 
street is hardest hit. In the fight for the lad it is 
that which knocks out the 'gang/ and with its 
own weapon — the weapon of organization." 

Miss Buck thus modestly sums up the qualifica- 
tions of an ideal club manager. "I look for- 
ward to the day when the work of directing 
clubs shall be as honorable a profession as school 
teaching, and when directors shall be required to 
prepare themselves for their calling by a course 
of study more comprehensive than that now re- 
quired for public school-teachers. In addition to 
a technical knowledge of history, sociology, psy- 
chology, physiology, ethnology, criminology, po- 
litical economy, pedagogy, the history of educa- 
tion, comparative religions, ethics, music, ath- 
letics, botany, arborology, and dramatics and one 
or two languages, the ideal club adviser should 
. . . have an attractive personality and ex- 
cellent manners; he should have travelled; he 
should have a fairly broad social experience; he 
should also have the power to inspire love as 
well as respect and admiration." 

While it is possible for a leader to get along 



186 The Burden of the City 

with fewer than these requirements, without 
them he will certainly, in some experience or 
other, be made to feel his limitations. Much is 
being accomplished on a scale less Utopian than 
that outlined, and more might be, if men and 
women were possessed with such a " respect 
for their subject " as would impel them to every 
possible preparation for the work. In all our 
cities raw material is waiting to be developed 
into manhood and womanhood — no, not wait- 
ing, for character never waits. If it is not being 
moulded into strength and beauty it is degenerat- 
ing into lawlessness, crime and pauperism. 

TRAINING FOR THE KINGDOM 

But though the church were able to train the 
child physically, intellectually and ethically to the 
limit of his powers, it would fail of the most 
important part of its mission if he were not 
brought into vital contact with the Saviour of 
souls. All training in what is good and useful 
may be means to this end, and yet all means may 
fail of the end unless in every way Christ be 
lifted up. There will be frequent opportunities 
for doing this. Children are quick to catch the 
spirit of an exercise — if the spirit be there — even 
though little is said formally. The beautiful face 
of the boy Christ in Hoftman's "Christ with the 
Doctors" hung in the boys' club room will preach 
many a silent sermon. There are teachers who 
open even classes in physical culture by asking 
God's blessing upon the exercise, and His aid in 



Children's Work 187 

developing strong and perfect bodies — fit temples 
for His spirit. And, contrary to the opinion 
often expressed, this in no wise detracts from the 
cheerfulness of the exercise nor does it keep from 
their classes both children and adults of every 
creed and of no creed. There are sewing- 
schools where, in the fifteen minutes given to 
opening exercises, the children get a clear glimpse 
of the Christ. But even this is not enough. 
There must be direct and continuous effort to- 
wards training souls for the Kingdom. 

Years ago, Horace Bushnell, prophet and seer, 
taught that the child of a Christian home need 
never miss knowing himself a child of the 
Heavenly Father; that he should be so trained 
that he would grow up a Christian and never 
know himself otherwise. There is something 
in every child's heart that makes him respon- 
sive to the divine call. Neglected, he grows 
harder, colder, farther away year by year. Bush- 
nell's plea was for such teaching as should anchor 
the soul to the eternal verities before ever it had 
drifted away. The church failed to follow his 
leadership and has lost much in consequence. 
But to-day Professor Coe and others are empha- 
sizing the same thought and it may be that now 
the church is ready to accept and act upon it. 

"This Christian education of the child means 
more than teaching him the catechism or to re- 
peat texts of Scripture, or to go to Sunday- 
school. It means home influence, fellowship 
with the good, membership in the church, union 



188 The Burden of the City 

with Christ. Given proper environment and true 
instruction, the child will grow into the truth, 
strengthen his religious tendency, and develop in 
righteousness and goodness. Help the child to 
have an intelligent faith in God, to choose wisely 
and act nobly, and you have made the religion in 
him perpetual and saved the man." 

This for the child of a Christian home, the 
child already within the influence of the church — 
but what of the neglected children— those in 
whom the ''light that never was on sea or 
shore " is already fading out in the early night of 
sorrow and sin ? With these the same purpose 
may be kept in view — to make them acquainted 
with Jesus Christ. The appeal may be made in 
every relation of life — as the Sinless Child, the 
Ideal Man, the Ever Present Friend, the Good 
Shepherd, the Tender Father, and as the image 
ever becomes more real and clear it will do its 
work of grace upon the heart. If Christ be lifted 
up He will " draw all men unto Him " — all men 
—then how much more the trustful heart of 
childhood! Then there should be gathered into 
the visible fold of the church all those who give 
evidence that they are even trying to follow Him, 
with such service and symbolism as will impress 
upon the heart the thought of its seriousness. 

Most down-town churches and missions have 
at times been driven to their wits' end by the 
hordes of street children who invade the services 
at sundry times. They are especially in evidence 
at the Sunday evening service. They are bare- 



Children's Work 189 

headed, noisy, dirty, and often accompanied by 
a baby brother or sister. They care nothing for 
the service, and have small reverence for the 
place, but show a decided preference for front 
seats. Some fall asleep and snore; some walk 
out at intervals during the evening ; some are 
forcibly ejected, to the great concern of all. No 
church calling itself Christian could shut its doors 
to these little ones, even though all they seek is 
shelter from the street, and yet to admit them is 
often to make the service intolerable for the older 
part of the congregation. 

Some churches have seen in this problem their 
opportunity. Among these are the Tabernacle in 
Chicago. It gathered this rabble of children into 
a room and gave them a pastor of their own; 
plenty of good music and a short sermon illustrated 
by object lessons or a stereopticon, kept them 
awake and interested. At first the hoodlum ele- 
ment had to be repressed, but order and rever- 
ence have gradually been secured, and now for 
months at a time, with a congregation of from 
100 to 150 children between seven and fifteen, 
not a child has had to be expelled. Out of this has 
grown the Children's Church, with its own 
"pastoral committee," its ushers, and its special 
Wednesday night service answering to the adults' 
prayer meeting. Children who show real ear- 
nestness of purpose become members of the Chil- 
dren's Church by assenting to the " covenant " 
with suitable ceremonies, and at fifteen, if they 
continue in the way, are admitted to the Taber- 






19c The Burden of the City 

nacle Church. Other churches have adopted the 
idea of the Children's Church, and it seems, as no 
other plan has done, to meet the need in the tene- 
ment districts. 

It is often asked, Do the children appreciate 
what you are doing for them ? Certainly not. 
Why should they ? How many well-brought-up 
men and women appreciated the efforts of parents 
and teachers in their behalf while they were still 
children ? Then why should these, deprived of 
most that makes life wholesome and desirable, 
feel overwhelmingly grateful for the puny efforts 
of society to restore to them a portion of their 
birthright as children of the common Father? 
We should think it reward enough if we see 
them day by day growing into their heritage. 
Perhaps we ask too rich a return for what costs 
us little. When we give gifts without love, they 
will love our gifts — not us. But if we love them, 
not professionally but truly, they will give love 
for love, scarcely for less, and love will be the 
lever to lift them into a better life. 



BIBLE LESSON 

Christ's tender care for childhood. (Luke 18: 15, 16 ; Matt. 
18: 2-5 ; Isaiah 40 : II.) 

The Church's responsibility for childhood. (Jeremiah 
13:20, last clause; Ezekiel 34:10, first clause ; Matt. 18:6.) 

Sins of society against childhood. (Ezekiel 34 : 4, 5, 6 j 
Joel 3 : 3.) 

Value of early training. (Proverbs 22: 6; 2 Tim. 3 : 15.) 



Children's Work 191 

Children in the ideal home. (l'salm 127:4,5; 128:3.) 
Children in the ideal city. (Zech. 8:5.) 



REVIEW QUESTIONS 

1. Is the Protestant church making suitable effort for sav- 
ing the children ? 

2. What influences work against the physical development 
of the tenement child ? 

3. What are some of the conditions that affect his moral de- 
velopment ? 

4. Name some special temptations to which the city boy is 
subjected. 

5. How do dark and crowded homes affect the lives of their 
inmates ? 

6. Specify some of the " restrictions " placed by state laws 
upon child labor. 

7. W T hat influences may be expected to work against re- 
strictive legislation ? 

8. What have woman's clubs and societies done for the pro- 
tection of childhood against early labor ? 

9. Tell something of the relations of glass manufacturing to 
child labor. 

10. What argument is used by the opponents of restrictive 
legislation ? Is it valid ? 

11. Name some enterprises intended to counteract the evil 
tendencies of city life upon childhood. 

12. Describe the purpose and plan of the Juvenile Court. 

13. What have women done to help in the development 
and application of this law ? 

14. Describe the creche or day nursery. 

15. W T hat is the effect of the kindergarten in the develop- 
ment of character ? 



192 The Burden of the City 

16. How are opportunities for play coming to be recognized 
as reformative agencies ? 

17. What embarrassments sometimes arise in connection 
with summer outings for children ? 

18. Tell about an outing for crippled children. 

19. How do missions and settlements try to meet the needs 
of children in tenement districts ? 

20. Why should attention be given to cooking lessons for 
girls ? 

21. What does Jacob Riis say of boys' clubs ? 

22. How may the religious element be brought to bear 
upon the work and play of a mission ? 

23. Describe the evolution of a " Children's Church." 



COLLATERAL READING 

Study of Child Nature, Elizabeth Harrison. Kindergarten 
Pub. Co. #1.00. 

Kindergarten in Sunday-school, Frederika Beard. Pilgrim 
Press. 75 cents net. 

Children of the Poor, Jacob Riis. Scribner. #1.25. 

Boys of the Street and how to Win Them, Charles Stelzle. 
Revell. 50 cents net. 

The Boy Problem, a Study in Social Pedagogy, William 
Byron Forbush. Pilgrim Press. 85 cents net. 

Boys' Self-Governing Clubs, Winifred Buck. Macmillan. 
#1.00. 

After the Primary— What ? A. H. McKinney, Ph. D. 
Revell. 75 cents net. 

Hand Book of Child Labor Legislation, for 1904, published 
by the National Consumers' League, New York City. 

Problem of the Children, and how the State of Colorado 
Cares for them, Report of the Juvenile Court of Denver. 228 
pages. 25 cents. 



Children's Work 193 

Charities — Special Juvenile Court numbers, November 7, 
1903, and January 5, 1905. 

Fresh Air Work, Charities for June, July and August, 
1905. 

The Kindergarten of the Streets, Everybody's Magazine, 
July, 1903. 

Where Tenement Children Play, Christian Endeavor World, 
May, 1903. 

An Officer of the Court, St. Nicholas, January, 1904. 

Child Workers at the Holiday Season and School Gardens, 
The Commons, February, 1904. 

Self-Government and The Bunch, and Vacant Lot Gardens 
vs. Vagrancy, Charities, October I, 1904. 

Child Labor in the United States, Bulletin of the Bureau of 
Labor, No. 52, May, 1904. 



CO-OPERATION 



TORCHBEARERS 

How fares it, Torchbearer ? 

Nay, do not stay me ! 
Swift be my course as the flight of an arrow ! 
Eager, exultant, I spring o'er the stubble, 
Thread through the brier, and leap o'er the hollows ; 
Firm nerve, tense muscle, heart beating : Onward ! 
How should I pause, e'en to fling thee an answer ? 

How fares it, Torchbearer ? 

Ah, do not stay me ! 
Parched is my mouth, and my throat may scarce murmur ; 
Eyes are half blinded with sunshine's hot glitter, 
Brands, half-consumed, from the torch drop upon me, 
Quenching their fire in my blood-heated boiling, 
Scarcely less hot than the fierce-falling embers ! 
Breath would scarce serve me to answer thy question. 

How fares it, Torchbearer ? 

Reeling, I falter, 
Stumbling o'er hillocks that once I leaped over, 
Flung by a tangle that once I had broken, 
Careless, unheeding. The torch, half-extinguished ; 
Fierce-darting pains through the hot hand that holds it ; 
Careless of all, if at last I may yield it 
Into the hands of another good runner. 

How fares it, Torchbearer ? 

Well ! now I fling me 
Flat on the turf by the side of the highway. 
So in one word be thy questionings answered. 
Praise for my striving ? Peace — I am weary ; 
Thou art unwinded ; stand, then, and shading 
Eyes with the hand, peer forward, and tell me 
How fares the torch in the hand of yon runner ? 
Naught do I reck of my strength, gladly yielded, 
So it be only the torch goeth onward. 

— Arthur Chamberlain, 



VI 
CO-OPERATION 

" A dream that is not all a dream." 

MISS OCTAVIA WEISE sat with a de- 
jected expression reading a penciled 
note written on coarse paper — a dis- 
reputable note from start to finish, and yet one 
that could scarcely be ignored. 

"Dear Lady," it ran, " I think you are a honest 
woman and i doant like to see you impose upon. 
There is a woman you go to see that is not a 
good woman she live with a man that is not her 
husband and she beats her little boy terrible and 
she tell you lies and gets you to bring her things 
I mean Miss Parrot that lives at Martin Street, up 
stairs I see you go there i spose you doant know 
that she is that kind of a woman she is, and I say 
I am goin to tell you My children hant got no 
shoes and my husband broak his leg six weeks 
ago and hant had no work sence but i do the 
best we can so If you want to know what kind of 
a woman that is you can come to my house and I 
can tell you all about that woman." 

Six months before, Miss Octavia Weise had 

come to the city to make her home with an 

aunt. Her father's death had left her with a 

slender but sufficient income. She was intensely 

197 



198 The Burden of the City 

interested in missions and desired to devote her 
time to work among the poor. In her own town 
she had been secretary of a Home Missionary 
Society, president of the Christian Endeavor 
Union and leader of a King's Daughters' circle 
which every year sent boxes to the city mission- 
ary stations. She was a little tired of hearing 
the wheels go round. She longed to escape 
from committees and business meetings — to see 
for herself what was being done and to have a 
hand directly in the doing of it. She had read 
much, and had ideas. Professional charity she 
abjured. She desired to come in personal touch 
with the needy and to aid them as her heart 
prompted her. Her aunt, who was also char- 
itably disposed, helped her in selecting a field of 
work, a very poor district, where almost nothing 
was being done by charitable societies or 
churches. 

Here she had visited assiduously, doing day 
by day whatever she could to comfort those who 
were in trouble and help those in distress. At 
first she alternated between heart sickness at the 
shocking conditions she unearthed, and an al- 
most hysterical exaltation of spirit that she 
could, by the gift of a crisp dollar bill or a basket 
of food, relieve so much misery and win such 
fervent expressions of gratitude. 

But as days went by it became depressing to 
find families relieved from starvation on Monday 
in exactly the same plight on Wednesday. 
Every day brought to her attention new cases of 



Co-operation 199 

destitution and more and more imperative ap- 
peals for assistance. She feared, as she found 
herself losing sight of the higher aims that had 
at first inspired her, that she would become 
merely a dispenser of cold victuals and second- 
hand garments. She wondered if it was so that 
the Lord felt when, after He had healed a sick 
body, He said, " See that no man know it." 

And with all her efforts she could not meet the 
demands. The income of a Rockefeller would 
hardly suffice for one day, she told herself, and 
there were the to-morrows. And back of all 
hunger and merely physical need she was 
beginning to realize that there were still deeper 
wrongs. She felt an appalling sense of soul- 
blindness, a denseness of ignorance, a shadow of 
sin, that did not have its source in the individual, 
but tainted all grades of social life and ran back 
into the past. It all began to press down upon 
her like a nightmare. 

Then a feeling of uncertainty as to her own 
judgment, and an increasing sense of responsi- 
bility, disturbed her peace of mind. She had 
thought it perfectly right to give aid to "worthy 
cases," and had felt confident of a stock of 
common sense that would help her to distinguish 
such from those who were merely frauds and 
impostors. But her classifications were becom- 
ing mixed. The most worthy cases at times 
showed unexpected tokens of depravity, while 
some good-for-nothing, in an emergency, would 
do an act of kindness or self-sacrifice that would 



200 The Burden of the City- 

have put a bishop to shame. Clearly the old 
lines of distinction would not stand. 

One day she had left the family of a poor 
cripple pouring out expressions of gratitude for a 
basket of food. Returning a few moments later 
for a glove she had dropped, she found the fa- 
ther whom she supposed unable to walk, hob- 
bling in through the back door with a foaming 
pail of beer. A look at the basket, hastily rifled 
of its contents, and another at the man, from 
whose coarse and cunning face a mask seemed 
to have fallen, gave her a clue to the situation. 
The food had been exchanged for beer. But 
another hungry-eyed cripple was there to share 
in the treat. 

It came back to her this evening like a picture, 
and with it others. There was little Mrs. 
Fischer, living in two rooms just above the 
cripple's home. Refined and ladylike in manner, 
her rooms spotlessly clean, her children neatly 
dressed — how could she ever have guessed that 
they were in such dire straits ? But when one 
day the rusty badge of mourning fluttered from 
the door the doctor let fall a hint that lack of 
food and medicine were chiefly responsible for 
the little one's death. Yet the woman had never 
told. 

Then there were things that she was utterly 
powerless to help, and sorrows for which all at- 
tempt at comfort seemed a mockery. There 
were Mrs. Meyers, for instance, whose oldest 
girl had run away, and Mrs. Shayne, whose boy 



Co-operation 20 1 

was in jail, and Mrs. Walters, with her broken 
arm and three babies to support, and the 
Hallorans who were always sick; and now — 
coming back to the note — this Mrs. Parrott, who 
was M not a good woman." 

She had really been much taken with the trim 
little French woman who seemed so responsive 
to efforts for her improvement and so devoted 
to her half-witted boy, on whose account she 
could seldom leave home. The first time she 
saw her she was trying to comfort a sobbing 
child on the street and had taken the last coin 
from her ragged pocketbook and bade him run 
to the candy shop and find solace for his tears. 
She had compared her in thought with the 
widow who gave her two mites. Was she 
really "a woman who was a sinner " ? A num- 
ber of circumstances had lately occurred which 
aroused her suspicions and gave credence to the 
woman's note. It was all so confusing, so dis- 
couraging. Miss Weise covered her face with 
her hands and for a moment struggled with the 
temptation to run away from it all and take 
refuge again in her village home; she was so 
helpless with her two frail hands to carry all this 
burden of woe and sin. But her childhood's 
faith and her sturdy country training came to her 
rescue. " After all, it's God's world," she said, 
11 and whatever is right to be done, can be done. 
It's my business to find out how." 

Five years have passed, and Miss Octavia Weise 



202 The Burden of the City 

is still at work among " her people/' as she calls 
them, though they believe that she belongs to 
them quite as much as they to her. A mission 
has been started in the neighborhood, largely 
through her efforts. This affords her a basis of 
operations. But this morning she is neither 
going to the mission nor to her people. She has 
taken the car for the business centre of the city. 
Entering a handsome office building, she ascends 
in the elevator to the third floor and walks to the 
door bearing the sign, " Factory Inspection. " 
The man at the desk looks up with a friendly 
greeting. 

" I have another case for you this morning/' she 
says. "One of my Sunday-school girls. Her 
mother claimed she was fourteen to get her into 
the factory, but last summer when she wanted 
to go on our fresh air party she was under 
twelve. I can give plenty of evidence to that 
effect." 

"All right, Miss Weise, we'll attend to it at 
once," he responded, making rapid entries after 
her directions, upon a card. " By the way, how 
is that last case coming out ? Annie — m — m — 
Freyling, was it ? " 

"Yes; that's another matter I wanted to speak 
to you about. I found Annie yesterday, as I was 
crossing the tracks, out picking up coal. She 
was raggeder than ever, and so dirty that I did 
not know her until she spoke. I asked why she 
was not in school, and she said her father told 
her if she couldn't work in the factory she would 



Co-operation 203 

have to gather the coal. She must earn her 
living some way." 

The man's eye flashed with the light of 
battle. "He did, did he? We'll tell him that 
his children will be more likely to take care of 
him when he gets old if he takes care of them 
while they are small. But in this case I think the 
work of our committee was done when we sent 
her home from the factory. There's no law 
against her picking up coal if she wants to, but 
there is a law that she must go to school. I ad- 
vise you to see the Compulsory Education Com- 
mittee and ask them to have the truant officer 
look after her. Next floor above. Take one of 
my cards. They'll look up the matter at once, 
I'm sure. We're obliged to you for bringing 
these cases to our attention, Miss Weise. I 
wish there were more who would interest 
themselves in the enforcement of laws/' 

" I'm obliged to you for fighting my battles for 
me," laughed Miss Weise, " since I don't enjoy 
fighting myself." 

" After all, it isn't all and always fighting, Miss 
Weise," said the man, suddenly wheeling around. 
" You'd be surprised to know how many factory 
owners we find who are ready to cooperate with 
us in enforcing the law. Otherwise it's a mere 
matter of business with them, you see. There's 
so much work to be done, and along comes Tom, 
Dick or Harry anxious to do it for the money. 
They have no time to look up evidence. They 
are running a factory, not bringing up children." 



204 The Burden of the City 

11 Still there is such a thing as humanity " 

began Miss Weise, hotly. 

"Exactly. That's your side of the question, 
and mine. We've got to have these laws to re- 
inforce the humanitarian, or rather, the prudential, 
phase of the problem. But really, a good many 
of the employers are kind-hearted men when you 
get at them, and would rather do things the right 
way than the wrong way, but the business push 
is so overwhelming they're driven along with it, 
whether or no. Really, it's the parents to blame; 
that's where you ought to begin." 

"Yes," responded Miss Weise. "We're try- 
ing to educate them as fast as we can, but it's 
slow work. They are foreigners, ignorant and 
bigoted. It's the men who see and know things 
to whom we must look for reform." 

"Yes, you're right there, too. It must be an 
attack all along the line. You're one of the 
sharpshooters, and we're heavy artillery. We're 
both needed, and each can reinforce the other." 

The truant officer acted promptly, and the 
second day thereafter the little coal picker took 
her place in the public school. Miss Weise soon 
took occasion to visit the school and find oppor- 
tunity for a little talk with the teacher, to enlist 
her special interest in the child in question, and 
secure her promise to report any irregularity or 
absence at once. She found the teacher a con- 
genial spirit, and the interview resulted in that 
mutual upward impulse which comes from the 
contact of one strong, earnest soul with another. 



Co-operation 205 

After leaving the office of the Educational 
Committee Miss Weise sought the Woman's 
Protective Agency. 

•• 1 ve come to ask your good offices in securing 
a divorce for a poor woman," she announced. 

" We do not encourage divorces," the woman 
at the desk answered, rather stiffly. 

11 Neither do I. But when it's a choice between 
that and compelling a frail little woman to sup- 
port a lazy, brutal man who makes her home a 
hell in the meantime and threatens her life and 
her children's, I think it is the less of two evils," 
responded Miss Weise, and went on to give the 
details of the case, which the office woman soon 
realized was one demanding extreme measures. 
The recreant husband was now in prison for 
sixty days, and would come back infuriated and 
more dangerous than ever. The best efforts of 
the church and the appeal to law had both proved 
unavailing to reform the man, and the jail was 
the last resort. The wife in her extremity had 
accepted the proffered services of a shyster law- 
yer to secure for her a divorce, for which she 
was to pay fifty dollars in monthly installments. 
But thus far she had been unable to save from 
her earnings even the first five dollars, and was 
in mortal terror of the man's home-coming. 

" But granting it best in this case to secure a 
divorce," said the agent at last, " you say she has 
already put the case into the hands of a lawyer 
and given him her papers. He might not choose 
to give them up." 



206 The Burden of the City 

" I think he would be willing enough when he 
is convinced that there is absolutely no money in 
it for him. And besides, he violated the law in 
soliciting the case." 

The agent looked up quickly. "Where did 
you learn so much about law ? " 

"Oh, one picks up things here and there. I 
think I got this from a lawyer who was helping 
to recover damages for one of my people. He 
frequently helps us with advice and counsel." 

As a result of this and two or three later inter- 
views, a decree of separation was secured, free 
of charge, and the little washerwoman placed 
where she could protect her home and children. 
Her pale face showed the lightening of the burden 
she had carried for years. 

From the office of the Woman's Protective 
Agency Miss Weise hurried to the meeting of the 
Board of Friendly Visitors. There she spent an 
hour and a half comparing notes and considering 
ways and means. Various cases came up for 
discussion. She learned incidentally that a child 
whose mother had requested the privilege of 
having it baptized in the church, had already been 
baptized in two other churches, receiving at each 
numerous gifts in the way of clothing. She se- 
cured a country home for a child in delicate 
health, and work at better wages for a girl of 
eighteen who was the sole support of her mother 
and little brother. She was also able to give in- 
formation regarding some other cases that was 
of material advantage in dealing with them. 



Co-operation 207 

For luncheon Miss Weise went to the mission 
where she was one of the regular staff of work- 
ers. Naturally the mission family were a little 
given to "talking shop " over their coffee. 

"I want to tell you about Mr. Mallory," she 
said to the mission " mother." " He is pretty near 
a hopeless case, I'm afraid — drunk whenever he 
can get enough to make him so. But there's so 
much that's good about the man I can't bear to 
give him up until I've tried everything. He is an 
intelligent man and used to support his family 
well. But he was unfortunate a while ago — lost 
the home that he was trying to pay for, when it 
was almost secured. Then his wife was sick a long 
time and his child died, and he became despond- 
ent and took to drink. He talks to me very sen- 
sibly when he is sober, but try as I may I can't 
get him to the mission. I tried sending the cap- 
tain of the Salvation Army after him, but he failed 
to get hold of him. Two of his children come 
to the sewing-school when they feel like it. You 
may have noticed them — little round faces and 
big brown eyes — they look alike and are always 
together." 

"Yes, I've noticed them. They are fine little 
singers." Then suddenly, "Is Mr. Mallory fond 
of music?" 

"Yes. His wife says his heart was broken 
when he had to sell his violin to pay his child's 
funeral expenses. She says, ' If Henry could 
only have had his fiddle he would have stood 
Rosie's death better; but when he got to feeling 



208 The Burden of the City 

lonesome like and didn't have that, he took to 
drink/" 

" We're to have a fine violinist at our free con- 
cert to-night," said the mission mother. "Don't 
you think that might bring him out?" 

"I'll try it. The music will bring him if he's 
in a condition to be brought. His wife needs a 
new sensation, too — such a spiritless, dilapidated 
creature as she is ! Of course she has had enough 
to make her lose heart, but if she'd only get up a 
little ambition, just for the children's sake, there'd 
be some hope of her." 

"Play the violin, did you say?" said the mis- 
sion mother suddenly, going back to first issues. 
"Mr. Pietro, who plays for us to-night, spoke of 
having lately come into possession of a fine 
Cremona, and said he wanted to give his old one 
to some mission or missionary who would put it 
where it would do the most good. Perhaps if 
Mr. Mallory had it he could play in our orches- 
tra." 

" Magnificent ! Violin versus whisky ! His wife 
will come to hear him play, and you and your 
Sunbeam Club will do the rest. We'll have that 
family on their feet yet. I felt that we should if 
only we could get the first leverage, and the violin 
will do it. I knew I'd get an idea here — I always 
do." 

"You don't get more than you give," said the 
mission mother cheerily, as her friend rose to 
leave. 

"Oh, I want another one of those Bibles, if 



Co-operation 209 

you have them. I promised little lame Tim that 
I'd bring him one. He's so anxious to join my 
Home Department. A nice clear print, please; 
their home is so dark. What a blessing that Bible 
Society is! This is the fourth, is it not, this 
month ? " 

Miss Weise's first afternoon call was upon an 
old colored woman living far down an alley. She 
had been a sufferer from rheumatism for months, 
and the doctor said he could do nothing for her 
under existing conditions. But at the mere men- 
tion of a hospital the patient would go off into 
hysterical groans and cries, declaring she would 
rather die than go there. 

But to-day there was new trouble. The land- 
lord had served notice that they must get out of 
the house at once. 

" You won't let them fro me out, honey ? Yo' 
won't let 'em do that?" she implored. But Miss 
Weise looked serious. 

" I'm not sure I can do anything, auntie. Why 
not let them have the old house ? It's not fit to 
live in, anyhow. See here, the wall paper is fall- 
ing off with the damp, and the floor is rotting. 
You'll never get well here." 

" I can't go to no hospital," she began, but Miss 
Weise sat down resolutely and took her hand. 

"Now, see here, auntie, it's the only thing to 
do. We'll take you just like a baby on a swing- 
ing bed in a carriage with two horses " 

The sobs ceased, and a look of interest came 
into the bloodshot eyes. 



210 The Burden of the City 

" Two fine black horses, and you'll be put in a 
nice bed, and I'll come to see you and bring you 
flowers " 

"Two horses? You're suah there'll be two 
horses, honey?" 

"Yes, sure. I've seen them." 

" And you'll suah come ? " 

"Yes, indeed. Did I ever promise you any- 
thing that I didn't do?" And following up her 
advantage, she won a faltering consent. Hurry- 
ing to the telephone she made arrangements for 
the removal, and before night the old black face 
beamed comfortably and contentedly from a 
snowy hospital bed. At the Bureau of Charities 
she discussed plans for the seventeen-year-old 
daughter during the mother's absence. 

"We've started a new laundry school," said the 
office woman, " and it bids fair to be a great suc- 
cess. We have graduated twenty women al- 
ready, who do fine work and get the highest 
wages. We take unskilled women and girls and 
give them the plainest work at first. Then we 
advance them through starching and fine ironing, 
and on to lace curtains and the finest lace and 
linen lingerie. A girl can earn enough to pay her 
expenses from the very first, and if she is quick 
and capable she will be able to earn three or four 
dollars a day when she graduates. We have 
plenty of work sent in from up town. The 
laundry has been self-supporting from the 
first." 

" That will be just the thing for Phyllis. Now 



Co-operation 2 1 1 

I want a good safe home for a factory girl just 
come to the city." 

"1 think she can get board at the ' Co- 
operate.' " 

"The — what?" demanded Miss Weise. 

"That's a new cooperative boarding home for 
working girls. Miss Dalyrimple, who manages 
it, was a working girl herself who came into 
quite a fortune on the death of a relative, and has 
used it to build a model boarding home for girls 
who earn small wages. The matron is a charm- 
ing, motherly woman, and the atmosphere is 
really homelike, and the board almost impossibly 
good for the price." 

Miss Weise's next call revealed a dismal pic- 
ture. A woman with stupid, bloodshot eyes and 
breath laden with the fumes of liquor, opened 
the door. It was Miss Weise's first call, but she 
had heard from the neighbors that the woman 
was a confirmed drunkard and would lie for 
hours in a drunken stupor while her baby cried 
itself into exhaustion. The situation demanded 
diplomacy. The woman was uncommunicative, 
but presently the feeble wail of an infant from a 
dark bedroom relieved the situation. In answer 
to Miss Weise's request the baby was produced. 
Miss Weise took the pitiful morsel in her arms. 
"Six months old? You mean six weeks, cer- 
tainly!" she cried. There really seemed no body 
at all within the mass of dirty, damp calico, so 
frail and light was it. The face was old and 
weazened and the hands like the claws of some 



212 The Burden of the City 

unfledged bird. A wire hairpin, the ends doub- 
led over and viciously sprawling, had been used 
to fasten the dress in the back, and the tender 
pink skin was scratched and torn. 

The woman was too stupid to be reasoned 
with. "A case for the Humane Society," said 
Miss Weise to herself. "After a few months in 
the Inebriates' Home I'll see what I can do for 
her. I think they will take the baby in with the 
mother." 

The woman's husband was an honest, hard- 
working man, heart-broken over the wreck of 
his home. He readily agreed to pay a part of the 
woman's expenses at the Home. The baby was 
turned over to a rosy-cheeked nurse in the fresh- 
est of stripes and smartest of caps. The stiff- 
ened, ill-smelling garments were stripped off, the 
little body was bathed, rubbed and powdered 
with deft hands, and, clean, warm and well-fed, 
it was laid comfortably away to wonder, if a six- 
months-old baby can wonder, what happy change 
had come into its wretched little existence. 

Two white-haired old people living in two 
tiny rooms next received the sunshine of Miss 
Weise's presence. The "auld wife" sat in a 
wheeled chair. A spinal disease made it impos- 
sible for her to walk. The husband was bent 
and crippled with rheumatism, but considered 
himself able to do at least half a day's work in 
the cooper's shop whenever the weather per- 
mitted. But through all the winter they had ab- 
solutely no resources save the chance charity of 



Co-operation 213 

friends and a scanty dole of fuel from the county 
agent. 

At Miss Weise's last visit they were rejoicing 
in a basketful of broken pieces of rich cake and a 
jar of pickles, the remains of a church festival. 
To-day they had only a little rice in the house, and 
no fuel with which to cook it. 

11 We don't get coal till the first of the month," 
the woman said, "and then it's such a little bit. 
Andrew is gone out to see if he can pick up 
some wood, but he's slow and rheumaticky. 
But the Lord is good, He always provides," said 
the old woman patiently. "Like enough An- 
drew may get a day's work in the shops, and 
then we'll have more to eat." 

"We won't take any chances on that," said 
Miss Weise, thinking comfortably of a five-dol- 
lar bill reposing in her pocketbook — a bill re- 
ceived that morning — the proceeds of a country 
social. " This is unendurable! " coming back to 
the subject of food. " You get sick from eating 
frosted cake one week and starve the next. 
Something must be done." 

"Sometimes we've thought we'd better — go — 
somewhere," the old voice had a quaver in it. 
"The winter is so long and cold. But you see 
we've never been separated, Andrew and me, for 
fifty years and more. Andrew needs me, and I 
— I don't think I could live without him. We've 
talked it over and we thought we'd rather stay 
here together till the Lord gets ready to call us 
home." 



214 The Burden of the City 

" Yes; I don't mean the county-house— not for 
such as you. But we must plan something. I 
know hundreds of good people, if they were 
only within reach. But we'll see." 

There was time for a chapter from the worn 
leather Bible, a little comforting heart talk and a 
prayer before Miss Weise hurried away, to return 
later with a basket of well-selected groceries. 

"Mrs. Grannis," said Miss Weise, interrupting 
her trembling gratitude, " I wish you'd do some- 
thing for me. There's a woman living just a few 
doors from here who needs religion. I've talked 
to her, but I can't seem to make much impres- 
sion. She's had a lot of trouble and she thinks I 
don't quite understand. She needs work, too — 
scrubbing and cleaning — for she has an invalid 
daughter, and there are so few about here who 
can hire. I want to have her come over here 
once or twice a week to scrub your floor and do 
your bit of washing or anything else that you 
need done and cannot do yourself. Now, don't 
protest until I tell you the rest. Of course I'll 
pay her. I have a little money for such purposes. 
But I want you to be a missionary to her. Do 
you see? Tell her about your boy who was 
drowned and the one who ran away from home, 
and the daughter you buried in the old country, 
and she'll know that you understand. Then 
when she sees that you have something that 
comforts you and makes you strong and patient 
— for it really does, you dear woman — I think she 
will want it, too. Will you let me send her ? " 



Co-operation 2 1 5 
M Oh, Miss Weise, Id be so glad to think " 



"Then it's settled. She'll make your rooms 
spick and span, and you're to set her a shining 
example of sweetness and patience — just as you 
do me — and speak a word for the Master if the 
opportunity comes." And she hurried away to 
make arrangements for a regular weekly visitor 
at the Grannis's. 

"How do you ever manage to accomplish so 
much with one pair of hands?" demanded once 
a friend of Miss Weise's. 

"With one pair of hands? I don't!" she re- 
sponded. "1 tried once working with one pair 
of hands, and I nearly broke my heart over it. 
Now I work with hundreds of hands, and scores 
and dozens of brains, better ones than mine, too. 
I am in league with the powers of earth and air — 
and heaven, too, I trust. Governments and do- 
minions, principalities and powers help to carry 
out my wishes." 

The only answer was a bewildered look at 
which Miss Weise laughed merrily, and went on: 

" Don't you understand ? Take those boxes of 
flowers, for instance, that I distributed among 
the children of the sewing-school this afternoon. 
Last night they were blooming in country gardens 
fifty miles away. To-night they are bestowing 
their beauty and perfume in a hundred tenement 
homes. Could I have done it with one pair of 
hands ? Perhaps a dozen pairs picked and packed 
them for me. While I slept the railroads whirled 



216 The Burden of the City 

them over the intervening miles, to be delivered 
into my hands by swift messengers, without 
effort or cost to myself. That's the work of the 
Flower Mission. The district nurse helps me 
take care of my sick people or the hospitals take 
them off my hands altogether. Truant officers 
and probation officers help me with my wayward 
children; and the settlements and missions and 
Salvation Army help me look after their souls. 
When other resources fail, the Bureau of Associ- 
ated Charities can always suggest something. It 
is a Bureau of wonderful expedients, I assure 
you. It has eyes and ears and hands everywhere. 
It can touch all sorts of springs and set going all 
sorts of wheels. Sometimes it takes a dozen 
different institutions to save one family. There 
are the Billingses. Their history began when lit- 
tle Ulrica wandered into my children's meeting 
one day. She was an interesting child in spite 
of her tangled hair and dirty face. She came two 
or three times and then stopped, so I looked her 
up. That was one of the dreariest homes I ever 
saw. The father had been sick for months, and 
had no prospect of being any better. The 
mother — well, if you ever saw a picture of ab- 
ject hopelessness it was she. The children 
begged or picked up things wherever they could 
find them. A fourteen-year-old girl looked as if 
she was in the first stages of consumption, and 
all five were poorly nourished, and as lawless and 
irresponsible as little Ishmaelites. I think at first 
my ambitions never reached so high as the re- 



Co-operation 217 

demption of the home — it seemed so hopeless. 
I only tried the first thing that promised relief. I 
got the father into a hospital, which relieved the 
family of his care. To my delight he was not 
only greatly improved in health, but soundly con- 
verted. Then, through the aid of the kinder- 
garten and day nursery, the two youngest chil- 
dren were taken care of, and through the Bureau 
of Charities we found work for the woman at 
wages that would about half support the family. 
The Bureau also sent the invalid daughter into a 
country home for a time, where the pure air and 
more wholesome living made a wonderful change 
in her. 

11 We had any amount of trouble to keep the 
older children in school. Over and over again 
the woman would give up her work and let the 
children remain at home because it was too cold 
or too warm, or because they didn't want to go, 
or because the other children teased them, or they 
hadn't clothes to wear. If I had been working 
alone 1 should have given them up long before I 
began to see results, but fortunately we never all 
became disheartened at once. The kindergarten 
encouraged the mission, and the cooking-teacher 
said to the charity-visitor, 'Be of good cheer.' 
A circle of the King's Daughters in my home 
town who often helped me in emergencies, sent 
some new bedding and clothing for the children. 
The father was in the hospital for months, but 
after he came home we found he was a skillful 
wood-carver, and, though he was not able to go 



218 The Burden of the City 

to the shops, we made arrangements for him to 
work at home and earn considerable. We kept 
the children interested in the work at the mission, 
and they became members of the Sunday-school. 
To make a five-years-story short, the man and 
his wife and the two oldest children are now 
members of the church, and the two younger 
children are coming along. Two of the children 
are working, and the family is entirely self-sup- 
porting, fairly clean, and thoroughly self-respect- 
ing. But it took the combined efforts of half a 
dozen different organizations, and the patient, 
prayerful, persistent, personal attention of at least 
one individual to accomplish it. But when one 
thinks of all the outgoing influences from one 
family, one must believe it pays." 

Miss Weise paused, and then went on hesitat- 
ingly: 

" Sometimes I have thought that the trinity idea 
of body, soul and spirit runs through everything. 
Charity, as the word is used nowadays, means 
simply the giving of relief, and in that sense the 
great charity organizations furnish the body of 
mission-work — eyes to see, feet to run, hands to 
do. Settlements and other social enterprises must 
be the soul of the machine, linking body and 
spirit together, and the spirit " 

"I suppose the church represents that," said 
the friend curiously. 

" Perhaps, — to carry out the analogy; but who 
can tell just where the spirit abides ? We do not 
know in the human organism, nor in the cosmic. 



Co-operation 2 1 9 

Perhaps it is everywhere, and pervades all. Cer- 
tainly, the same spirit that gives power to the 
church should also inspire every department of 
charitable effort. God is love, and charity in its 
original conception was love, though the mere 
giving of money or material things, in the com- 
plicated relations of modern life, may mean al- 
most anything else than love. But as the body 
without the spirit is dead, so charity without love 
produces only social dissolution and decay. It 
needs the gift of life, personal service, interest 
and sympathy to interpret to the estranged masses 
the love which the churches profess. 

" It has been a wonderful experience to me," 
Miss Weise went on still more thoughtfully, 
"this definite purpose to live for the help of 
others rather than for self. It has seemed almost 
like a new birth, bringing me into changed rela- 
tions with the world and, I think, with God. I 
find myself no longer an isolated individual, 
whose chief aim is the preservation of my own 
life and happiness, but a part of a great organ- 
ism, whose members are all working towards the 
same end — the end for which we pray when we 
say, ■ Thy kingdom come/ It matters little to 
me now whether my own efforts are appreciated 
or applauded, or not, or whether I am able to see 
any results at all. I know I am part of a Whole 
whose success is certain because God is in it. If 
I can help in my own place and way that is 
enough. I am glad for every institution whose 
object is the bettering of either bodies or souls, 



220 The Burden of the City 

whether it aims to help individuals or masses. 
Its success is mine, because we work to the same 
ends. 

" This may seem an old truth to have come so 
like a revelation, but we can only learn a truth 
by living it. I believe this is the great truth that 
the present century is to demonstrate, though it 
is a truth two thousand years old. 

" It is all told in those words that have always 
been so familiar, and have lately become so much 
to me, ' Ye are the body of Christ.' There is the 
cooperation and interdependence of the members 
one upon another, so that the settlement cannot 
say to the mission, ' I have no need of thee,' nor 
the church to the Social Improvement Club, 'I 
have no need of thee.' Every good work is 
needed for what it may accomplish, and is 
necessary for the perfecting of the whole. 

" But greater even than the cooperation among 
the members is the cooperation between the 
human and the divine, between the body and the 
Spirit. We are 'workers together with God.' 
Realizing this, we do not need to measure re- 
sults. All we have to do is to be in our place, to 
be in harmony with the whole, and doing the 
work to which we are called. Christ is the 
Head, and we can leave the results with Him." 



BIBLE LESSON 

Members of the Body of Christ 

Read I Cor. 1 2 : 4-3 1 ; reading if possible in the Twentieth 



Co-operation 221 

Century Testament which, by putting them into modem Eng- 
lish, often throws new light upon familiar passages. 

Observe how Paul emphasizes and enlarges upon this idea 
of the Body of Christ in Romans 12: 5; Eph. 4: n-13; 
5 : 29-30 ; Col. I : 24. 

For the union with Christ as the Head see " Head of the 
Body," Eph. 1 : 22, 23 ; 4: 15, 16; Col. I : 18; " Partakers of 
the Divine Nature," 2 Peter 1:4; " Sons of God," 1 John 

3:2. 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

1. What special reason for discouragement had Miss Octavia 
Weise, after her six months' experience as friendly visitor ? 

2. What was she attempting to do ? 

3. After five years' experience how had she modified her 
plans of work ? 

4. What difficulty did she meet in classifying her people as 
" worthy " or " unworthy " cases ? 

5. What assistance did she require in dealing with vagrant 
and truant children ? 

6. How did she meet the problems of child labor ? 

7. How was the appeal made to parents and teachers as 
well as to employers ? 

8. What aid was received from the Woman's Protective 
Association ? 

9. Describe the typical case of Mr. Mallory. Upon what 
principle was the remedy applied ? 

10. How was an implacable landlord turned to good ac- 
count in the case of " Auntie " ? 

11. What was done with the drunken mother and baby? 

12. What were some of the results of haphazard charity as 
typified by the experience of the aged couple ? 

13. How many and what societies combined to work for 
the redemption of the Billings family ? Would their help have 



222 The Burden of the City 

been available without the patient, persistent attention of an 
individual ? 

14. What is comprehended in the conception of the church 
as the Body of Christ ? 



COLLATERAL READING 

Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy, Joseph Lee, 
with introduction by Jacob Riis. Macmillan. $1.00 net. 

The Development of Thrift, Mary Wilcox Brown, General 
Secretary Children's Aid Society, Baltimore. 

American Charities, A. G. Warner. 

Charities, a weekly journal of local and general philanthropy. 
Indispensable to students and workers in city fields. The 
first issue of each month is a magazine number. $2.00 a year. 
Editor, Edward T. Devine, 105 E. Twenty-second St., New 
York City. 

The Proceedings of the National and International Con- 
ferences of Charities, Corrections, and Philanthropy, con- 
stitute the best possible authority on charities. Published by 
the Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore. 

Charity and Home Making, Mary E. Richmond, in Charities 
Review, Vol. VI, No. 2. 

Married Vagabonds, Mary E. Richmond, in Proceedings 
of Twenty-second National Conference of Chanties. 

What to Do, Social Law of Service, Richard T. Ely, 
Chapter XIII. Eaton & Mains. 90 cents. 

The New Era, Chapters XIV and XV. 

Provincialism in Charity, Jeffrey R. Brackett in The Com- 
mons, June, 1904. 



C 14 w 



